For More Than Country
by Regency
Summary: AU. There were few things Captain Samantha Carter wouldn't do for her country as a member of Jack O'Neill's Special Ops team. It just so happened that the very thing her superiors were asking of her was one of the few. Story I of II complete.
1. Prologue

Author: Regency

Title: For More Than Country

Genre: Action/Adventure, AU, Drama

Rating: R

Word count: ~63,671+

Pairings: Jack/Sara, Sam/Jonas, Sam/Jack (friendship/UST), Janet/Kawalsky (friendship/UST) with other lesser relationships

Contains/Labels/Warnings: **non-graphic** **dub-con/non-con **(see warning note), language, mature themes, graphic reference to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, violence, non-graphic sexual situations, references to torture, depictions of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, flouting of various military regulations and social mores.

Spoilers: Includes but is not limited to _A Matter of Time, Secrets, Children of the Gods, Gamekeeper, The First Commandment, _and_ Shades of Grey_.

Summary: There were very few things Captain Samantha Carter wouldn't do for her country as a member of Jack O'Neill's Special Ops team. It just so happened that the very thing her superiors were asking of her was one of the few. '_Neutralize Jack O'Neill by any means necessary,_' they'd told her. It wasn't the first order she'd defied but it was the biggest. (Also known as, the increasingly complicated life and times of Samantha Jean Carter, PhD.)

Author's Notes: When reality and canon contradicted one another, I decided to go with canon for the sake of familiarity. I've futzed with canon due to some obvious time discrepancies. You'll note them as you read. Also features cameo appearances by various _Stargate Atlantis_ characters.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from _Stargate SG-1_ or _Stargate: Atlantis_. They are the property of their respective producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

Warning Note (contains spoilers): The non-con occurs between O'Neill and Carter due to a forced contact situation during a mission. It is portrayed as rape and dealt with as such between the two characters.

~!~

Sam woke up on the wrong side of the bed on the best morning of her life. She rolled clear off the high mattress, generally perfect to accommodate her considerable height, but today agonizing on the horizontal trip down. She limped into the shower at 0435 hours with a bruised hip and a swelling cheek from where her face had impacted the nightstand.

She had worked up a headache by the time she stepped out at 0445 hours to find that she didn't have nearly enough makeup to conceal the bruising and no magic wand to reduce the swelling. Captain Samantha Carter was about to report to Peterson Air Force Base, her new duty station, looking like a victim of domestic violence.

Today of all days, she was _not_ in the mood for this shit.

She tore through two pairs of nude pantyhose before one managed to stand up to her wrath long enough to safely envelop her well-worked thighs. It didn't matter that she'd worked her ass off through basic to earn these legs or that she ran seven miles every evening to keep them, or even that she seemed to have to shave every ten minutes just to say smooth. All that mattered was that the damned regulations called for these damned stockings with this damned uniform.

_It's tradition, Sammie_, her father would have said. This morning, she would have been hard-pressed not to punch him for it, two-star general or not. She was not in the mood to pour herself into her dress blues, but tradition dictated that that was exactly what an officer should do when first reporting for duty on a new base.

Sam was seriously considering taking further courses in military history just so that she could find out who'd founded these inane rituals and punch them in what remained of their solar plexus. She wasn't generally the bloodthirsty type, but she wasn't above desecrating some hallowed ground right about now. She was that teed off.

Today was supposed to have been perfect. All the plans had been made; papers signed and ink dry, I's dotted, T's crossed. Murphy was supposed to have taken a freakin' holiday. So, Sam was completely clueless as to why nothing was going right.

By 0515 hours—still early but fifteen minutes later than she'd planned—Sam walked out of her new apartment only to remember that her car wouldn't arrive in Colorado Springs for at least another week. Until then, Sam was going to be a loyal patron of the bright yellow taxi. With a resigned sigh, she turned around and went back inside to make the phone call. _If this morning were a bigger disaster, it'd be Chernobyl._

Sam spent another twenty minutes waiting for her ride to arrive, during which she managed to inhale three cups of coffee and pace like a caged lion. Between her nerves and the liquid overload, it stood perfectly to reason that as soon as the cab driver honked outside, she'd suddenly have to pee. Sam made one last mad dash to the bathroom; all the while chanting, "Please, don't leave. Please, don't leave," knowing that with the sort of luck she was having he probably would.

He almost did.

It was only thanks to some incredibly undignified arm-waving that Sam managed to salvage her morning. The driver gave her a curt nod and she hopped into the back of the cab. It seemed that she'd gotten the only driver in the Springs who had no idea how to get to Peterson AFB. The fresh captain was beginning to believe she was being auditioned for sainthood and that she was seriously about to bomb, because if she was late, she could not be held responsible for the morality of her actions.

Luckily, she wasn't late. She was unbelievably early. Sort of embarrassingly early if the SFs at the security checkpoint were anything to go by. She'd presented them with her credentials and her orders and gotten a raised eyebrow for her trouble. After months of training for a job that women just didn't do, Sam was pretty used to it by now, but she could have done without the doubt at face value.

Sam cleared the doubt from her mind with a head shake and paid her cabbie in correct change. She had the pleasure of discovering, then, that her fare was exactly all the money she had on her today. The rest of her cash must have still been in the jeans she'd worn the night before. It was all she could do to keep from throwing up her arms and going back home to bed. Clearly, nothing positive could come from this day.

_If this is any indication of the way my tour will go, I should probably resign now before I kill myself in the line of getting a cup of coffee._

At 0610 hours on Monday morning, all Sam wanted to do was find a quiet place to wallow in her misery. At 0610 hour on a Monday morning, all the places that were usually good for that were closed. She knew for a fact that the Officer's Club wouldn't open for a couple of hours yet and she wasn't particularly interested in learning the social dynamics of the base via the commissary just yet. She simply wanted to sit and stare at a wall until she could recapture the part of her personality that had made her so formidable in Special Ops training, the part of her that had probably gotten her this billet to begin with. She had gone from irate at her run of bad luck to despondent. She didn't have time to feel that way today.

Samantha Jean Carter didn't freak out when the going got tough. She got inspired. Now, she was just waiting for that inspiration to strike.

Her appointments with the base commander and her department head were coming fast and Sam knew if inspiration didn't strike soon, disaster would. She needed time to decompress and space to think. At home, she'd been too busy unpacking, planning, and re-planning to really prepare herself for the fact that all her work was about to pay off.

The doctorates and the extra training, and the inexplicable year she'd spent languishing at Nellis in technological research had come to gold. She'd enjoyed her work, but she hadn't enjoyed sending her prototypes to be tested by people who didn't know better _on_ people who didn't know better. Some of the devices she'd designed had been utilized in that moral grey area that had always given Sam pause. She'd finally concluded, long after the decision had already been made for other reasons, that if anyone had to use a weapon she'd invented for good or ill, she'd sleep better at night if she was the one to do it.

Sam had no illusions that this would make her a better person. In fact, she was sure it wouldn't, but she felt like it was a small thing she could do for her brothers-in-arms, to save them from the nightmares that plagued her father decades after he'd transferred out of Covert Ops.

As he would have said, _Sam was her father's daughter, but she had her mother's heart._ She'd never hated him for saying that, even if she knew it wasn't true. She hadn't been selected for this team, or for any team, because she was a loving and nurturing soul. She'd been picked because she could wield a sniper's rifle with deadly accuracy in the dark of night. She'd been picked because she was light on her feet and as graceful with a hunting knife as Craig Biggio with a Louisville Slugger. When she struck, no one got up. She'd spent several quiet months worrying what that said about her.

She wasn't worrying so much about that anymore. She'd been handpicked for one of the best Ops units in active service. _Someone thinks I'm doing something right._ Any doubts she had she'd left in Nevada. That's where those doubts had to stay or she'd get herself and, likely, her entire team killed or captured. It wasn't an option. _Time to wake up and smell the war paint._

Sam looked up and realized that she'd been wandering around the training grounds for the better part of a half-hour. She didn't actually know for sure—her watch, wherever it was, was not on her wrist—but her aching feet told a story of some longevity and suffering. She took their word for it and went to find her unit commander's office. She doubted anything good could come from arriving at the base CO's office this much before her appointment. She didn't want to be obnoxiously early, simply right on time.

The newly-minted captain found her new unit commander's office without much fanfare since it was a location with the least amount of fanfare possible. Within the indoor training facility (already populated by sweating, grunting cadets, officers, and enlistees alike), she found the path to the Special Ops inner sanctum.

It was essentially a lounge with sundry mismatched chairs and tables, all crowded around a TV both larger and, seemingly, older than Sam herself. All of the chairs were empty, but Sam still got the sense that people had been here recently. There were magazines left open and snack wrappers that hadn't been discarded littering the table tops. She got up close and personal with a half-full can of coke that'd been abandoned on the floor. With a roll of her eyes, she shook her head. She hated to generalize, but all she could think was, _Men!_

For want of anything else to do, Sam began picking up the trash and tossing it out in the nearest bin. Before long, the place still looked like an all-man's land, but it also looked like it had seen a woman in the last decade.

She nodded with some satisfaction and continued on her way. It was 0647 hours, if she could trust the clock on the wall. This whole impromptu cleaning jag had taken longer than she'd expected. If she waited around to meet her new team CO, chances were she'd be late for her meeting with the base commander. _Looks like I'll have to catch up with him later._ Sam turned tail and headed out of what she hoped would be her new den. It wasn't perfection or state-of-the-art, but she thought she could get used to it. Hell, she thought she could love it—if she didn't already.

Sam didn't have much time to get from point A to point B, so she was forced to use logic instead of solicit directions to the base commander's office. She reasoned that the best place for it was the center of the base in the administrative building. She was right and right on time.

She'd been standing beside the desk of the general's aide a light two minutes when the call came down for her to step inside. She gave her epaulettes a perfunctory brush, smoothed her skirt, and did just that.

The man inside the office was not who she was expecting and yet not totally out of the realm of possibility. He stood tall decked in black and green BDUs. He was lean and leaning against the edge of the general's desk. Upon seeing her, he lifted his chin in greeting but made no move to return her salute given that he wasn't in Class A's. She didn't have to see his name embroidered on his chest to recognize the minor legend known as Colonel Jack O'Neill. _He looks nothing like his pictures. That's talent._

"Captain Samantha Carter reporting for duty, sir," she announced as she came to attention.

The colonel raised his eyebrows with what Sam really hoped wasn't amusement. "Relax, Captain, before you hurt yourself."

"Sorry, sir," Sam murmured and dropped into parade rest stance. She kept her eyes trained directly to the right of the colonel's face. It was easier not to do a point-by-point facial comparison if she wasn't looking directly at him. She couldn't help herself, this was the way her brain operated.

"Captain, you're allowed to make eye contact. I'm your CO, not your drill instructor."

"Sir, yes, sir," she bellowed. If her peripheral vision was right, her unit commander had started smirking roughly point-two seconds before she'd started speaking.

"Y'know, I saw that coming and I _still_ thought it was funny. Nice one, Carter."

Sam nodded, feeling the tense knot in her gut start to unravel a bit. "I aim to please, sir."

"That's all I ask, Captain. All I ask."

Once Sam finally allowed herself to set eyes on her new unit CO for more than a passing glance, she found him bouncing on the balls of his feet with his hands in his pockets and a sparkle in his eye. He really seemed nothing like the man he was rumored to be.

"So…how do you feel about hockey?"

Sam grinned. She guessed that was all right.

"Don't know much about it, sir, but I'm dying to learn."

"Sweet." He tipped his head toward the door. "Let's go meet the team, then." As the colonel sauntered past, Sam wasn't exactly sure what to do. She did have another appointment to keep, after all.

"Uh, sir, I'm supposed to be meeting with General McClear—right now, actually. Shouldn't I wait to see him?" Sam tangled her fingers together nervously out of sight. She hated to start questioning orders this early, but it paid to clarify…_Right?_

"That won't be necessary, Captain. The general was called into an emergency briefing with the Air Force Chief of Staff and he asked me to be the welcome party in his place. So, _welcome_," he declared with enough sarcasm to kill a field of daisies. "Now, come on, the team's gone crazy wondering about you. Might as well put 'em out of my misery."

Sam smiled wider, relieved. "Lead the way, sir."

"Thought you'd never ask." With a grandiose—and comically overblown—gesture, the colonel invited her to pass through the door first. She did. After all, she was nothing if not a stickler for tradition.

~!~

Sam felt like the new kid in school as the colonel led her back over the path she'd just taken. Before, she'd managed to pass through and garner little attention, but with him at her side, heads turned. It made her nervous and a bit uptight. She stiffened her spine and forced herself to focus solely on the sound of the colonel's voice as he pointed out the various facilities around them.

She filed the info away for later use, even if it was all standard and most bases were essentially laid out the same way. It never hurt to familiarize oneself with the particulars.

"…And blah, blah, blah, you've been on military bases before. I don't think there's anything I can tell you that you don't already know. But, if you have questions, feel free to ask me or pretty much anyone you meet."

Sam nodded, glad that he didn't beat around the bush much and also glad that he didn't think she was an idiot on sight. _Of course, he doesn't think I'm an idiot. Everybody knows that Jack O'Neill doesn't suffer fools. If he didn't think I was worth it, I wouldn't be on his team._

"Will do, sir." Sam kept her hands clasped behind her for want of something to do with them. She had the most ridiculous urge to just salute constantly. It was as if all her knowledge of military protocol had died a startling and untimely death this morning. It was nerves for the most part; she was trying particularly hard not to think about it.

"So, Captain…" Sam picked up on the undercurrent of speculation in his tone pretty easily.

"Sir?"

Her new superior stuck his hands into his pockets as he ambled along, favoring her with a couple of surreptitious glances that made her stomach plummet. _Shit, I've managed to mess up already. How?_

"Met any street gangs lately?" He seemed to ask in all seriousness, yet Sam couldn't miss the spark of humor dancing at the corner of his eyes.

"Street gangs, sir?" Though Sam'd be damned before she'd admit it, she was totally lost. _Is this code?_ She was feeling that overwhelming urge to call it a day again.

He made a vague gesture towards his face; specifically, his eye and cheek. Suddenly, Sam really did want to call it a day. She'd all but forgotten about the victimization she'd faced at the hands of her furniture not three hours earlier. _Industrial- strength concealer, it goes on the shopping list now. _ In hindsight, some of the weird looks she'd gotten already made a bit more sense. _Keep being this observant, Sam, and you'll shoot up the ranks. Really._ She'd just arrived and Sam was convinced that Jack O'Neill's sarcasm was quicksand and she was sinking.

"Ah. About that, sir…"

He gave a relaxed shrug and waved off her explanation before she'd even had a chance to give it. "I only have two questions about it, Captain. Are you okay? And, how bad does the other guy look right now?"

Sam ducked her head, feeling silly about triggering concern on her first day, but also touched that she'd managed it at all. Special Ops wasn't a profession for the gentle sort—Hurlburt Field had given her a rough education in that—but the colonel had a reputation for caring about his people. "It's nothing a little ice, aspirin, and time can't sort out, sir. As for the other guy, he still looks like my nightstand."

She gave him her own surreptitious glance, but was startled to find herself the subject of her CO's scrutiny. She stopped short and held her breath. She never would have noticed the minute movement of his eyes if she hadn't been looking for it. From her hairline to the collar of her dress uniform, not a single area of exposed skin went uninspected. She stayed loose and let the tension drain from her body. If she was holding anything back, he'd see it and she had no desire for him to brand her a liar on her first day.

"Sir," she inquired, quietly, finally.

He raised a dubious eyebrow, but tipped his head to her unspoken question. "Just checking the damage, Captain. Can't have a member of my team at less than 100 percent."

Sam nodded as though she understood, which she did, she just didn't…also. _Well, as long as I'm making perfect sense on this fine Monday morning, what else can I hope for?_ She rolled her eyes towards the heavens and seriously wanted a do-over.

"Something eye roll-worthy you wanna share, Carter?"

At the sound of his voice, Sam came very close to dropping her face into her hands. She was making the impression from Hell today and she had no idea why. She was a good officer; determined, meticulous, and impressive, the way she'd been trained to be. She did not air her internal monologue for anyone, much less her new CO, to hear. That included facial expressions.

"Honestly, sir, I don't know what's the matter with me this morning. I'm usually a lot more put-together than this," she apologized by way of explanation. _Come on Sam, you've pulled out of a simulated bombing run in an F-16 at 8-plus G's. This is nothing compared to what you know you can do._

The colonel had paused to lean against the side of the building they were passing now, the commissary. Lifting his chin a few degrees to acknowledge a couple of saluting trainees, he crossed his arms and gave her his full attention. Sam managed not to fidget successfully this time, dropping back into parade rest as a matter of protocol and a measure of comfort.

"You know everyone has bad days, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you know what the odds were that your first day on a new base, in a new town was going to be a bad one?"

Sam momentarily tried to do the math, but the colonel's growing impatience with her silence prompted her to think the question was rhetorical. "No, sir," she answered finally.

"Well, they're high, Captain. Pretty much astronomical. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that the odds that it would be crap were better than the odds it wouldn't be."

"So…_what_?" The look the colonel gave her this time told her in no uncertain terms that he was beginning to doubt her common sense, or at least her sense of humor.

"_So_," he murmured lengthily, "lighten up, Captain. Some days are gonna suck. Some won't. If you're lucky, at the end you'll be able to say that you had more good than bad ones. That'll be enough."

She guessed she'd have to take his word for it. "Sir, yes, sir."

He flickered both brows at her and shook his head as he started to lead the way again. "That joke only works once, Captain."

"Cut me some slack, sir. I'm new." She affected a vaguely naive affect and was rewarded when he double-took to look back at her suspiciously.

"Oh, no, you don't. You can't pull that one with me. I've seen your file, Captain. You're not to be messed with." He sounded impressed. "Over 100 hours in enemy airspace during Desert Storm? Give me a break on the harmless as a butterfly routine, Carter. Born at night, not last night." It had been a flash in the pan of Sam's career, that didn't mean she failed to take pride in it.

Sam beamed brightly, glad that something was finally working in her favor. Her record was one thing that had always preceded her and, today, she was unbelievably grateful. "I haven't the slightest idea what you mean, sir."

"Sure you don't. Save it for the combatants."

"Yes, sir." She followed behind him, a bit more certain now and without hesitating to hold her head high. She could love this. She just had to get past the first few days.

They were quiet the rest of the walk back to the training center, save for the times when the colonel whistled aimless tunes. He never finished a whole song, but started and stopped like he'd gotten distracted halfway through.

Sam, for her part, was content to observe the personnel as they started their days. The running trainees, the officers and the enlisted alike rushing from one place to another like their lives depended on it. _Maybe they do, who knows? _Sam wasn't naïve enough to think that she was the only person with an important job to do. She knew that undelivered orders and reinforcements that never came could turn the tide of a conflict as surely as a team of commandos in the desert. Any effort to defend her country was a team effort even if she didn't know every member of her team.

The colonel drew her in with a wave. Sam realized she'd passed through the heart of the facility on autopilot. They were back at the lounge. This time it wasn't empty, though the trash was back.

"Oh, look," the colonel said, shifting his weight to rest against the door jam, "the gang's all here—and company!"

Sam stepped to his right to take a look. It's a mid-sized group of men and one woman. Sam felt herself tensing up again when they all swung their eyes from the colonel to her. The large TV in the background was blaring a hockey game that Sam figured had to be taped considering the time of day. She nearly lost her footing when the colonel pushed her forward with a sharp nudge at the center of her back.

"Go on. They don't bite." Sam was not encouraged by the unspoken, '_much.'_

Deciding to skip the formalities and go straight for familiarity, Sam smiled. "Hi." She waved, feeling incredibly lame as they all traded smiling glances. _Wow, way worse than high school._

Finally, the only woman in attendance stood up and came over to introduce herself. "You must be Captain Carter. Sam, right," she asked and shook Sam's hand in welcome.

"Yes, ma'am." Whenever she met someone new, she assumed they outranked her until she was told otherwise.

"No need for that," explained the petite woman. "Captain Janet Fraiser. I patch these delinquents up when they get themselves into trouble." She couldn't have reached higher than Sam's chin, but she was damn near as formidable as the colonel himself. _Note to self: stay off her bad side._

"Yes, it's Captain _Doctor_ Frasier," Colonel O'Neill interjected semi-helpfully. "Keeper of the big honkin' needles. Beware."

Sam cracked a smirk; it came easier this time. "Sounds like someone's been on the wrong side of a hypodermic recently."

"All the time, Captain," said one of the men still seated in the mismatched chairs. He pushed himself up and out, casting a broad and tall shadow that belied his open smile. "The colonel lives to wind the doc up." He stuck out his hand and took Sam's as soon as Janet let go. "Major Charles Kawalsky. I'm team2IC."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, sir." He dismissed her formality with a wave.

"When it's just us guys, you can call me Charlie. It's no big." He pointed to another man who stood up in response to his signal. "That guy's Ferretti, he's our fourth." He gestured, next, toward a very young officer, a lieutenant based on his insignia. "That's Simmons. He handles the doodads, makes sure everything's in good working order before it even gets in our hands for a mission." He leaned toward Sam conspiratorially and said, "He may seem shy but he is not someone you wanna piss off. The difference between a faulty chute and one that gets you safely to the ground is that guy."

Nodding, Sam agreed. "I read you loud and clear, sir." She smiled kindly at their obviously nervous subordinate. He blushed.

Louder, Kawalsky said, "Hey, Jack, this one ever gonna stop calling me _sir_? It makes me feel old."

"You _are_ old, Kawalsky," the colonel shot back, no longer content to leave Sam to the wolves. He ambled fully into the lounge to stand opposite the good Doctor Frasier, bookending his new team member and, probably unknowingly, consoling Sam's still lightly fluttering nerves.

Kawalsky snorted and looked back at the one known as Ferretti for back up. The wirier, and probably younger, Sam thought, of the two grinned wide and welcoming. Kawalsky was in for a disappointment. "You're both old. I'm the spring chicken of this trio."

"Ah, not anymore, Major," Frasier said, coming around to slap Ferretti affectionately on the shoulder. "Your trio's a quartet now and you've got yourselves a new spring chicken," she teased, nodding toward Sam. Sam doubted that anyone without the captain's southern charm would have gotten away with treating a superior officer so cavalierly. She envied the backbone that took.

"So, everyone's old but Carter," the colonel questioned, a decidedly rhetorical note in his voice. "Sweet." His faint half-smile would have let Sam know that he didn't mind if the tiny shoulder bump didn't give him away. "Anyway, this is the crew pretty much, Ops Team One in full. Most of the time, it'll just be the four of us on missions unless it calls for additional personnel. If that happens, Frasier and Simmons are up first if their expertise is called for. Occasionally, we do combined ops with other units and noncoms, but that hasn't happened in a while."

Kawalsky dropped back into his comfy looking armchair and picked up on O'Neill's trailing thread, saying, "In the meantime, we specialize in training cadets and enlistees for the field. All four branches. I think we've even done an exercise with the Coast Guard. Didn't we?"

"Sure did," Ferretti answered for him, his inflection cutting. "Did not enjoy the hypothermia that came with that exercise in futility."

"Be nice, Lou," the colonel warned, a blend of fondness and firmness softening the reprimand.

"Yes, sir," he retorted, said with all due respect and touch of rebellion. They were equals on one level, if not all levels, Sam was sure of that. _They must have bought their senses of humor from the same bait and tackle shop._

As though sensing Sam's confusion, Frasier gave her the details. "The general tries to keep dissension between branches to a minimum on base. He's turned that into the colonel's problem, which makes it…," the woman trailed off and shrugged. It was everything and nothing at once. Sam had a little experience with that.

Sam muttered, "Guess as long as we're in the business of making miracles."

"That's what I said," Ferretti exclaimed, giving Sam the third approving look she'd gotten today. Yes, she was keeping count. "She has the sense that God gave a macadamia nut. Somebody put some stars on her shoulders." Sam was only half-certain that had been a compliment, but that was how she decided to take it.

"Ferretti," the colonel scolded, eyes flashing, "cut it out before you scare the nice captain off and get reported by some passing grunt with their eye on your job." Ferretti shut up quick, even if he looked damned pissed he had. Sam sensed some underlying tension. She was thankful that it wasn't all because of her.

"Sir, yes, sir," he snarled. Kawalsky gave him a sharp look and Sam was left to wonder whether Janet's services were going to be needed to patch somebody up for a court martial. She wasn't sure just whose ass was about to be on the line though. _Never let it be said that tempers don't run high among friends._

"Hey, Lou, why don't you take a walk," the team's 2IC advised. If that had at any point been suggestion, Sam must have blinked through that part.

Ferretti visibly gritted his teeth, then, complied. Watching him go in silence, Sam thought it must have burned to be dressed down by an officer of identical rank. Seniority had its place, but it never seemed fair at the time. _You either love it or loathe it. _Though she hadn't had the pleasure, she expected it was on the horizon. Law of averages dictated that at some point something unpleasant had to happen to her. It also dictated that eventually this would be the unpleasant thing. Now that she'd seen it up close, she could tell it was not going to be a barrel of laughs.

About like the room was after Ferretti had stalked out in a controlled storm. The colonel looked annoyed. Kawalsky looked exasperated. Frasier seemed to be developing a mother of a headache. Simmons just looked incredibly uncomfortable. Sam could relate to that feeling. She felt like the only one present with no idea what exactly had gone down in the last five minutes, or why.

"How about those Canucks," she blurted all of a sudden.

Frasier giggled nervously. The colonel snorted before patting her on the shoulder and turning away. Kawalsky raised an eyebrow, smirk still lighting his face, and nodded almost proudly.

"The mantle has been passed, grasshopper. You are now the icebreaker."

Yeah, she was being mocked mightily, but there were worse things. "I will use my power well, master," she vowed and bowed.

"See that you do."

Her CO started off the slow clap and the rest picked it up.

"Now, that is how you make a debut," said the colonel, breezily. "Carter, you get set up with the doc at the infirmary. She'll set you straight with whatever shots"—he shuddered—"you'll need. When you're done, either drop me a line or come on back and we'll go over the schedule for the week." He paused for a loaded second, and then continued, "Think there's something coming down the pike, but for the moment, it's above my pay grade. Because of that, I want you to get a head start on team training. If we get orders to head out in two days, I don't want you totally unprepared."

"Yes, sir." She had no idea what training he meant but she could fake it with the best until she did.

The colonel gave her a long inscrutable look. Far different from the dancing glimmer in his eyes in the general's office, different even from the worried inspection he'd proffered near the commissary; this look said he saw everything she didn't want him to see. Her nerves, her need to prove herself, her abject fear of failure—and the fact that she wouldn't be leaving this place until she'd conquered every one of those. There were more embarrassing truths he could have seen in her eyes.

He departed without another word, giving neither affirmation nor reproof. She supposed he hadn't made up his mind yet. She decided that she'd have to do it for him. _This is the beginning of the rest of my life. There's no way I'm screwing this up._

Stiffening her spine and returning her attention to the other captain in the room, Sam decided it was time to put her money where her pride was. "Doctor Frasier, shall we?"

The petite physician, not much older than Sam but with eyes that had clearly seen much more, gave a nod toward the door. "Of course."

From behind them, Kawalsky pitched, "Fifty bucks says she takes the vacs like a man." Were she younger, Sam might have bristled at the remark.

"You mean better than you then, Major," quipped her female colleague lightly.

Sam swung her eyes to the offending party in disbelief. "Wow," she mouthed. Janet, because she was officially Janet in Sam's mind, grinned. The silence was almost painful and only became less so at with the low-pitched chuckling that sounded from Lieutenant Simmons' corner of the room.

"Ha ha, Doc. Ha ha," Kawalsky grumbled and Sam could see him sulking in her mind's eye, possibly while sending Simmons the evil eye.

"You're welcome, sir." Smugness apparently ran in the family, Sam thought, because Janet wore it like a Meritorious Service Medal.

"Don't you have shots to administer to unsuspecting airmen?" He tried for snide and landed at petulant.

"It's funny you should say that, sir, since I'm pretty sure you're behind on yours. See me in the infirmary this afternoon."

"But, Doc!"

"No buts, Kawalsky, or it'll be your butt at the front of the line."

He sighed in irritation. Janet looked even smugger. Sam understood who was really in charge here. _This is not my father's chain of command._

She decided that she did love the place already, and maybe that was why.

"Now, Captain, let's see about that shiner you're working on, there."

She sighed. _Knew it was too good to be true._

~!~

At 0500 hours on the morning after the best day of her life, there was a knock at Sam's door. Not her door at home, but the door of her temporarily commandeered base quarters. It was the colonel's doing; she had nothing to do with it. Okay, nothing other than the mother of all yawns in the middle of an impromptu cram briefing in spite of the gallon of coffee she'd ingested in the hours before. That was her responsibility, grammatically faulty explanation and all.

The colonel had seen her exhaustion, done some basic travel math and—aided by her embarrassed admission of having absolutely no cash on-hand and the collective realization that Peterson really needed to have an ATM machine put in—decided that she'd be staying on base for the night. She had and now a new day had begun, and Sam didn't have a thing to wear, but she opened the door anyway.

She staggered back in response to a stack of nondescript clothes and other things being lobbed at her chest. She grabbed them before they could fall only to glare at the figures smirking from the other side of the threshold. It wasn't insubordination but God would she have loved for it to have been.

"It's what the trainees usually wear but it should do in a pinch until Supply comes through with your BDUs," the colonel explained from the front of his twilight riding trio. Sam narrowed her eyes at him in confusion. She could pick up her own uniform and would have later in the day. She hadn't been asleep at this relatively late hour, but she hadn't been prepared to get dressed either. It must have shown on her face, because her CO got a look of comprehension on his face. "Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that we usually take laps around the base a few mornings a week."

"Most mornings," Kawalsky corrected. There was a touch of teasing arm-twisting in his tone and Sam's estimation of the man only rose. _No one can say they lack balls around here._

The colonel groused. "Most mornings. Yeah, what he said." He bounced on the balls of his feet and stuck his hands into the pockets of his jogging pants. Sam thought he looked like a kid eager to show the new girl around. Though they hid it better, his cohorts—her new cohorts—were no better. "So, you in?"

She decided that she liked that look on them. "Yes, sir. I can be ready in five."

"Make it...five, then." He seemed liked he'd been ready to challenge her when good sense had prevailed. He shrugged. She grinned. "Yeah, we can do five. We'll just go warm up." He threw an encouraging wave over his shoulder and led Ferretti and Kawalsky off into the early dusk.

It would be another hour or more before the sun even contemplated a cup of coffee much less rising. They clearly loved to slink about in the dark. Early riser or not, Sam would have to get accustomed to their way of doing things. If she could get dressed in five minutes, she could certainly get used to whiling away her mornings racing a group of overgrown kids from point A to point Z and back again. That could only be so hard.

Exactly three days later, Sam wished she could go back in time and smack her three days younger self with an MP-5. Kawalsky and the colonel were bickering about who was manlier while adeptly dodging muddy puddles from the most recent, unexpected, rain storm. The major had already knocked their superior into what was effectively a pond of rain water once. Now the colonel wanted payback which the major was only too glad to outrun.

_The colonel doesn't take being outstripped well._ Sam shook her head and manned her pace, keeping step with Major Ferretti, who appeared content to keep step with her in return. He was the old fresh-faced kid and she the new. They had a lot to talk about but Sam was content to listen to the beating of booted feet on the packed earth. It was about all that was keeping her awake right now. Without the adrenalin of first day jitters or a good cup of caffeine to her name, Sam was asleep upright. As amusing as her superiors were, they were not equal to the task of a big cup of java, no sugar, no milk, no cream. _God, I need to stop tormenting myself._

She roared a great yawn and nearly fell on her face in the process. Ferretti's quick reflexes saved her from a broken ankle and three weeks of wasted downtime. Sighing dramatically was out of the question though blushing wasn't. Sam couldn't have been more grateful for the lingering shade. _Damn it, those three early days have caught up with me. Gotta get the hang of this._

With a gracious, if shamefaced, smile to Ferretti and a totally manufactured burst of speed, Sam rushed forward on the trail they'd circled a half a dozen times already to slam between Kawalsky and O'Neill and start the lap again. They'd begun to slow down, to meander. Sam didn't meander anywhere. If she went, she went full speed ahead and with all due intent. The morning run wasn't going to be any different.

As for the rest of the team, they'd just have to learn to keep up. There was a new spring chicken in town.

Her daily exercise regimen paid off in endurance. She knew she couldn't outrun her team indefinitely, but she liked to make an impression when she could. She breezed 'round the outside of the shooting range, mentally cataloguing the safety features that made that a safe, if unadvisable, thing to do. She passed the parade grounds, already feeling the dust the men were kicking up at her heels. She slogged through the heart of the base, past the semi-unconscious airmen chugging enticing mugs of government-issue sludge. She doubled back at the unaccompanied officers housing, re-covering the distance from her front door and circled the training center on a lark.

Looking behind her and realizing she'd actually lost them, she grinned and jogged in place near the back door. She was dead-tired but pumped. She liked winning and she liked getting people not to underestimate her. She was a challenge and she needed her team to understand that. It was the only way this could ever work.

Sam started stretching again to shake the fatigue out of her limbs and joints. Duty waited for no woman's nap. Regardless of the fact she'd stayed up most of the previous nights studying whatever missions reports she had clearance to access in order to better understand the team's dynamic, she knew she still had to prove she fit in here. And she absolutely did. She knew it down to her bones. _Just hope the colonel knows._

Feeling sufficiently cooled down, Sam stopped her stationary exercise to lean against the brick wall. _I think it might be time to invest in a multivitamin._ She'd thought she was in shape; how old she felt right now belied that.

A quick check of her watch informed Sam that she hadn't seen her team for a full fifteen minutes. She frowned. While she may have been in arguably better physical condition than them, there was no way they'd be fifteen minutes behind her. _Something's up_, she thought and dashed inside the training center.

She didn't even stand out among the multitude of sweaty bodies already at work and play. Just one more head and heaving chest and one more pair of charging feet. This was a place where she could disappear. Inhaling a great breath of sticky, drying Coca-Cola, coffee grounds, and sweat, Sam slid with a fair amount of grace through the door of the lounge.

The guys were definitely sweating like pigs, but they weren't panting anymore. All eyes were trained on the TV screen and Sam wasn't comforted by the fact that it wasn't hockey. CNN blared and bloviated with its talking heads and their perfect hair and pressed clothes. They were blandly beautiful and unimposing. They were absolutely wrong for this story where nothing was bland or beautiful about it, rather garishly horrifying. It was a crash course in what evil man could perpetrate against man.

Sam had taken history courses all throughout her academic career. She had seen pictures and heard firsthand accounts of one-sided battles, massacres, and holocausts. She had just never seen it up close, living and breathing in real time.

"This begs the question," one of the talking heads said. "What separates genocide from 'acts of genocide'?" Sam could only stare, because this was purely academic to them. It was words on paper and an international forum and not a life, not _lives._ This was why she'd gotten into this business and out of her last ones. There were simply some enemies who couldn't be defeated from a distance, from the air.

"Sir," she found herself saying. She didn't know what was going to come out next, she just knew that this was a defining moment for their team and she needed to make that connection now, to _show_ that she knew and to prove that he knew it, too.

Without looking at her, the colonel nodded. "I know, Carter." In three words, he managed to acknowledge everything she wanted to say and everything none of them could. _Can't it be someone else this time?_

Kawalsky did look at her to say, "Gear up, Captain. We've got orders." Sam acknowledged his command with a slanted nod. She didn't know the full story and she was afraid to leave before she did. This was shorthand and she was still learning.

Ferretti let out a long, slow whistle. It was as garish as the news, but knew it. The young major spun on his heel to turn away from the screen. Instead of broken in a smile, his face was creased with uneasy knowledge. He looked at her with something akin to pity and as much as she hated it, she stood easier in the understanding that she wouldn't be entering this hell alone. Whatever this hell was.

"Hey, Cap'n?"

Automatically, Sam's spine stiffened and she met Ferretti's eyes fearlessly. She could take what he could dish out. "Yes, sir."

He offered her the mug of steaming brew in his hand. "Coffee?"

Sam felt her lips twist with some small relief. "Yeah, sure." She took the cup and took a sip.

Finally, the young captain got the rush she'd been waiting for. Too bad it didn't do anything for the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Then again, she imagined that nothing would.

"So, where're we going?" she asked as Ferretti began to lead her from the lounge. She had an idea, a feeling, a gut instinct that she wanted to ignore.

He clapped her on the shoulder companionably and told her, "You really don't wanna know." He'd known her for three days and he could already read her. She wasn't convinced that Kawalsky and O'Neill were far behind.

That would definitely take some getting used to.

~!~

When they stepped off the plane in Rwanda, it was the heart of daylight and hot as hell. Sam didn't pretend she couldn't smell the variations on dying and dead flesh that pervaded the air. The smell alone would put her off the colonel's offer of barbecue for a while.

The airport was deserted save for the growing queue of U.N. peacekeepers being flown in. There weren't enough by any number and the need was too big and too vast. They were far from armed with their single sidearm each and, constrained by their mission statements, they could only fire them for purposes of self-defense. Sam didn't know why they'd been sent at all if they could only open fire to protect themselves. Wasn't their purpose to protect the ones who were being led to the slaughter?

Then again, she supposed that was why her team was here, disguised and far better armed among this cadre of guardians and mediators. They would protect the protectors and, if they were lucky in an unlucky time, transport as many of embattled citizens as they could out of the country. They weren't taking sides and no blood was supposed to be shed, but they were not to allow any of their protectees to be harmed—at any cost.

Sam thought she could live with 'at any cost.' From the looks on their faces, O'Neill, Ferretti, and Kawalsky definitely could. The difference between her and them was that although she'd excelled at 'eliminating the enemy threat' in training exercises, and she'd more than excelled at it in the air, she'd never actually had to do it under face-to-face field conditions. She had yet to go on an op and take a life. But now that she was here, she couldn't discern any exit strategy that precluded it. Somewhere in this warring nation was the first combatant Sam would ever shoot, or otherwise, to kill.

And she would kill them. Because to do otherwise meant to expose her team to danger and that was something she could never do. _I'm sorry,_ she said to that person, even if they'd never hear her and never understand. That was just the person she was. _Guess dad would be proud of that._

Sam pointedly brushed dirt from the light blue beret she wore that identified her as a peacekeeper, or a Blue Beret. _If Kawalsky makes one more crack about how it brings out my eyes, I'm going to stop being peaceful._ She glared at her superior with impunity because he couldn't exactly get to her from the other side of the colonel and Ferretti, both of whom seemed amused at the continuing hostilities of distraction taking place over their heads.

"Captain, Major, let's be big boys and girls. We fight with our fists, not with our words," the colonel sagely counseled them.

Sam snorted. "Nice lesson, sir."

"I try, Captain."

Sam raised an eyebrow in remembrance. "All I ask, Colonel. All I ask."

He gave her a quick, impressed look. _Yes, sir, I remember._ His knowing smirk was comment enough for her. She liked to do the little things to impress him.

Kawalsky coughed, "Kiss-ass." He coughed again and waved off their attempts to either aid and/or smack him. "Sorry, gotta be the dust."

"Sure," the colonel went on with a touch of exasperated fondness. Sam had a feeling he'd given up on controlling them for the afternoon. Sam shrugged to herself. _That's probably for the best. It's one against three; he's so outclassed here._ She was rewarded for her mutinous thoughts with a shoulder bump that would have knocked her over if she wasn't used to that sort of thing at this point.

She glared up at the colonel while he looked smug as a duck in water. "Yes, sir?"

"Do I detect snippiness, Captain," he asked with affected seriousness. He had a small smirk hovering around the corner of his mouth and she imagined if it weren't for the shades she'd be able to see his eyes overflowing with his usual brand of humor. Funny was his default position._ I see how you work, sir._

"No snippiness for miles, sir."

"Didn't think so." He gave his head a little tilt, silently encouraging her to move forward and take flank while he fell back to six. There'd be few if any hand signals here. They didn't want to give away that they were different from the others.

Sam frowned but did as ordered, sliding around him to take her new seat. _Looks like the mission's begun._

While Ferretti and Kawalsky continued to joke and kid, it could only be called that due to the feigned lightness of their voices. They were in field mode. No one was free from their scrutiny. Not their fellow peacekeepers—as if they could be ignored in their startling vests of blue—nor any of the insurgents who stood watching from the sides of the roads as they rode the hollowed-out supply trucks through the overrun towns.

Sam's fingers began to ache from clinching them so hard and she realized why. Somehow they'd found their way to the sole firearm peacekeepers were allowed and were clutching the grip like a lifeline. She didn't know what she was expecting to happen, or when, she just feared being caught unawares. She didn't want anybody to die because she hadn't acted quickly enough. _She_ didn't want to die for the same reason.

Her fatigues stuck to her skin from the heated friction of her disassembled M40A1 sniper rifle strapped across the middle of her back. It was the best way to conceal things, strapping them under her uniform. Anything carried in luggage was subject to search and seizure and this was the last thing they wanted found.

_Not in the old U.S. of A. anymore_, she mused with something bordering on black humor. None of the peacekeepers, including the members of her own team, could be caught carrying more than the minimum allowed weaponry on this mission. It was in the Rules of Engagement and God knew the nations' governments and the U.N. Security Council were damned serious about those. Any actual troops on the ground meant interference in a foreign internal conflict. Regardless of the gross human rights violations taking place in plain sight, interference wasn't an official option for the U.S. government. However, there were always the unofficial alternatives to consider.

They were the unofficial alternative. Sam hoped they'd be enough.

Mid-afternoon saw them putting themselves between children and men, coerced and coercing, to take swipes at people who seemed exactly the same save for their lighter skin. They waved machetes and AK-47s at which Sam flinched, once, though she did not retreat. It was one time too many. She immediately became the weak link, the one they would continue to test.

Sam gritted her teeth. This was her job, her post, and she would not flinch again. It didn't matter that the best in Ops had her back. She'd been trained to stare hopeless evil in the face. Hell, she'd been trained to _be_ hopeless evil. There was no way she was ever looking away again.

The militants wanted an excuse. If she showed aggression, they had it and it'd be all out war; at least here on these grounds. It was already wartime everywhere else. Perhaps naively, Sam hoped they could safeguard the Butare Province just a while longer. One of the few places that no one was rushing to spill blood, where there was so little enthusiasm for the taking of Tutsi lives that Rwandan Armed Forces were being flown in to get it under way had to be protected. In a country tearing itself apart at the seams, it was the best she could do to stave off any bloodshed at all.

While Lieutenant-General Dallaire headed up the effort to evacuate potential noncoms from Kigali where there was, in minimum, a chance in hell of success, Sam and company had the inglorious task of a hopeless cause. _They may not die in this hour, but we're a dozen bodies against a force five times our strength. We're kidding ourselves and these poor people._ She believed it so strongly that she ached with the intensity of it. Yet, she didn't back down. All she had to their sight was a sidearm and set of baby blue accessories that would never see a Parisian catwalk, but she knew she could be more damaging in an instant than they could be.

The secret she kept and that their orders demanded would be all told in the dark where she excelled. The premeditated taking of lives to save others would have made her skin crawl if she saw at least some sympathy in the eyes of those before her. They seemed content to wait her out, to wait out her entire team. She didn't know the names of the other eight people who'd been assigned to their force and she didn't particularly care as long as they had the fortitude not to say die first and regret later.

As long as they didn't get in her way when she carried out her mission to evacuate the embattled people huddled in the church behind her, Sam had absolutely no problems with these perfect strangers. They had all come with a single mission anyway: to keep peace. They had simply come with different limitations on how they were enabled to do so. _A little duplicity here, a little cloak and dagger there, does it matter who lies as long as more live?_

The President didn't think so and neither did his Joint Chiefs. The United Nation Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) had turned into a bust so fast there were heads spinning and not just in the war zone. Non-intervention was in the process of failing spectacularly and there were already dead personnel to answer for on their side. There'd be no one left if all anyone could do was stand aloof and look imposing. Sam now knew from experience that a machete was a hell of a lot more imposing than a long-distance sniper rifle nobody could get a look at.

Worried as she'd been about taking lives before, she was anxious for it now. It wasn't a matter of her goodness or her evil. She was a foot soldier carrying out other men's plans. It was a matter of what she could live with and she could live with ending them sooner and moving her charges sooner and going home sooner. It had been the notion of slaying the lonely soldier that had given her nightmares. Just a man, more likely a boy, doing his job that would have to die so that she could do hers. Now it was dozens and they weren't lonely, and their 'job' was anathema to all she believed to be good and right.

It didn't lessen the nightmare in her head, but maybe, just maybe, she could live with what came after nightfall after all.

It was 2236 hours Local Time on the fifteenth night of April the first time someone fell at the behest of one of Sam's precisely aimed bullets. From the distant tree line behind and to the left of the church, Sam had watched her charges' would-be executioners prowl about the clearing like so many restless hyena. By then, some had already wandered away, content in the knowledge that the peacekeepers would have to leave sometime and when they did, they wouldn't be taking anyone with them. As grating as she found that smug expectation, Sam was painfully aware of its truth.

Scenes like it had played out across the national stage with all the gore of _Titus Andronicus_. This would just be another instance if someone, anyone didn't start eliminating the threat posed by the watchers. This was Sam's first mission, but it was also her job. _It's as humanitarian as it gets in Ops_, she observed idly. They didn't make the calls, they just ran the plays. An hour before, the colonel had broken the line and punted her the ball.

_Time to move the chains._ With Ferretti covering her back in the shadows offered by the narrow moon and the whistling trees, Sam took her shot. Whoever she hit, and she wasn't sure who it was, went down like a sandbag on a flooded plain. She'd been ready for shouting and fear. She hadn't been prepared for the nearly tangible sensation of dam-breaking rage as the combatants that had faded into night rose up again.

With a shared look and an oath, Sam and Ferretti turned tail and ran. He was nearly humming as he leapt into a trench that ran alongside their pre-decided path; she followed suit. He kept his head down and moved quickly without making a sound. She thought that had to be a something one just learned because she felt like a rhinoceros tramping over bubble wrap. _They can hear us. They have to be able to hear us._ The screaming directly above their heads was answer enough for Sam.

She nearly broke formation and changed paths. If not for suddenly being yanked forward and taking a hard right, she would have. Had they not been in the middle of a country that was on the verge of murdering itself—and likely them next, Sam might have protested Ferretti's near paternal grip on her arm. She wasn't a child, her feet weren't defective. Then again, neither was her brain. Talking now? Bad idea, very bad.

The good captain kept her own counsel and followed the good major's lead. _He knows how this works. He won't lead me wrong._ It was time she learned to truly trust her teammates. This was the proving ground and what ground it was.

All of a sudden, there was a fist in front of her face, directly in front of it. She could make out its outline even in the faint illumination left behind by the sky's spontaneous cloud cover, along with the shape of an arm extended firmly across her waist. _Do not proceed, sitrep,_ they told her.

Her training triggered, she dropped down, and Ferretti came down with her. His typically jovial face was pinched in concentration. If he'd been a cat, his ears would have perked up as he gave their immediate surroundings his complete attention. In spite of having adjusted to the night, Sam's eyes felt useless, so she decided to follow his go again.

She tipped her head toward the direction they'd come. _That could be wind or footsteps._ She couldn't be sure. If it was steps she was hearing, the person must have been picking their way through a minefield for all the irregularity of their gait. _A limp maybe?_

Just as she was sure that they needed to check, Sam felt another squeeze on her arm. She knew it for what it was and kept to Ferretti's six as he led her forward again. She kept her ear to the ground above the trench they were traveling. Sam was praying, something she didn't do, that it was one of theirs. Her gun was still hot, thus, she hadn't been able to put it away yet. She couldn't afford a second-degree burn any more than she could afford to be caught over-armed. _Please, be one of ours._

Ferretti froze out of the blue and Sam was left biting her lip in frustration. She wasn't as afraid as she was pissed. She was not dying or, worse, getting captured, then, killed on her first mission. _That would not count as proving myself, damn it._

An obtrusive flashing light blinked at the floor of the shallow gorge. Instants of daylight mixing and disrupting the night. Sam recognized the seemingly disembodied fingers manning the switch. With a grim smile, Ferretti appeared to do the same. He gave a sloppy salute that would have shamed a general or twelve. It warmed Sam, however, forcing her think that there was maybe more than one way to honor tradition than repeating it like clockwork.

They stayed low in spite of the fact that their pursuers were a left turn and a few hundred meters behind them. Keeping the colonel's now-signature stride in hearing range, they followed him until the gorge broke open to low ground. He dropped lightly before them, rebounding on the balls of his feet. The twilight had resumed and he was tinted in shade underneath the worn green ball cap he'd produced from places unknown.

He'd abandoned his light blue duds at the church along with theirs. Inside a hole in the graveyard was a neat cache of vests and berets that would certainly piss off somebody somewhere. Thankfully, those someones were in the opposite direction of themselves and their merry band of runaways. That had been the plan anyway.

With a vague point behind him, he advised them of their new direction. By process of elimination, Sam figured that Kawalsky was holding down the fort with the peacekeepers and their protectees. _I don't envy him right now._

Her superiors stepped lively but Sam didn't struggle to keep up so much as she struggled to be a discreet presence. She didn't have experience sidestepping leaves. Nature didn't bend to her will, so she bent for nature. In doing so, she found herself more exhausted of the subterfuge than the physical exertion.

One last time they dropped into crouches to see around the bend. It was a sparse tree line that was only as useful as the late hour. There was no light signal this time, just their CO's intuition. He glanced back to Ferretti momentarily before making a quick, low dash across the open ground and vanishing into the brush.

Sam waited beside Ferretti with her back to the bank of higher ground. She daren't look up to see if there was anyone there. Call it stupid, call it refusing to tempt fate; either way, Sam refused to look. Regardless, she listened. Beyond the steady, strong thrum of her pulse, she heard the militiamen in the distance. Her gun hand twitched as, somewhere in the distance, an AK-47 gave a hasty, angry report.

She didn't think about it because she didn't want to. Despite being trained to know, she couldn't tell it the shot was coming or going. _Should I be on offense or defense? Is my team okay? Am _I _okay?_ She was wordlessly asking more questions than she could expect to have answered, than she could even comprehend.

Her M40A1 was cooling across her shoulders but her Beretta was snug on her hip. She laid a palm across it and breathed. There'd never been a worse time to panic than tonight. The mission wasn't over yet.

Ferretti grabbed hold of her camo and yanked her along the colonel's trail. Sam felt like a beacon with her pale blonde hair reflecting all manner of starlight. That didn't mean she stopped. If she was going to be a target, she was going to be one that moved. In this killing field with more machetes than guns, Sam was going to take her chances outrunning death rather than waiting for mercy to slap her in the face.

The pair of hands that caught her was unfamiliar, swinging her sympathetic nervous system into high gear. The bearer of those hands was face down on the dirt before they could think of giving name, rank, and serial number, and before Sam bothered to ask. _In the field, some people identify themselves and some people kill you first. No guesses which one I am_, she reflected, the web of her hand still firmly drilling the face of her unknown assailant into the ground. Surprisingly, she'd done it with the least amount of ruckus possible. _Didn't even rustle the grass._

Yeah, she was beginning to understand where the smugness came from.

Just as quickly, she got a crash course in where it went when it left, too.

"Easy, Captain," the colonel hissed against her ear, lethally close. "He's one of the good guys." She hadn't heard him or felt him or smelled him, or all around sensed him in the least until he had her dead to rights. But she absolutely heard him loud and clear now that he did. She let go.

Her…victim rolled up onto his feet, a dim figure among the whistling trees. He brushed himself off with minimal grumbling. She had no idea who he was or how he'd gotten here. Though unable to see it on his face, she sensed a smirk on her CO's mouth. _When all else fails, guesstimate._

"Peacekeeper," she asked in an ineffectual whisper. _God, everything carries out here._

"You betcha," he pitched effortlessly under the radar of listening ears. Sam frowned and not because she'd attacked one of their own. This learning by experience thing was starting to get to her. She was just out of her league with these three; they had years' advantages over her and there hadn't been a moment while here that she hadn't felt it. Yet, like so much else, she put the thought off till a safer occasion.

_Of course, he's one of us. The colonel had everyone dress down, so we wouldn't become even bigger targets out here._ She doubted they'd taken kindly to being inexplicably ordered around by a supposed comrade. They'd followed anyway; they were here anyway. From what she'd seen, that was the way things tended to work where Jack O'Neill was concerned.

"Now, sir?" _May as well get back to business._

"Now, Captain, we get everybody the hell out of here." Rather than wonder how he made it sound so easy, Sam just went with it. _Crazy like a tactically-brilliant fox._

"Where to, sir?" She stuck close to his side as he strode surely through the brush. The single unadorned peacekeeper took up the rear with Ferretti falling in beside him. _The air doesn't even move when they do._ She was determined to learn how they did that.

"We're set to rendezvous with the major three kliks from the recce site." He pushed at her with his shoulder, a wordless personal sitrep request. Thoughtlessly, she pushed back to say, _Situation normal with me, sir._ He made a vague gesture of acknowledgement and they went on. "We'll then proceed to Kigali, where we'll touch base with Dallaire's peacekeeping forces. The Blue Berets'll take it from there and we'll head on home."

"Sounds like a plan, sir."

He regarded her oddly before nodding slowly. "Yes…it does. Let's get to it, then." She wondered what he was thinking when he gave her that look.

"Yes, sir," she answered sharply. There wasn't much more that could go wrong, she figured, might as well as act like it all made sense whether it did or not. _I still don't compose the plays. Hell, I don't even get to see 'em. Doesn't mean I can't execute 'em with the best._ Sam really hated the idea of how Ops worked sometimes. If her CO had been anyone else, she'd have no confidence in the work at all.

Luckily for her—for them, she reminded herself—he was as good as his legend.

Luckily for him, she had all the confidence in the world.

They proceeded on the colonel's signal toward the rendezvous point in complete silence, intermittently halting and continuing at his unspoken command. There were informal patrols assigned to the area but they had the hilliness of the region on their side, if not the home court advantage. They knew how to fight on these kinds of battlefields, even if the city attached was an outlier.

_The cultural and academic capital of the country; killing the people here _absolutely_ makes sense._ Sam's internal monologue had begun to incorporate her teammate's free-floating sarcasm. When nothing adhered to reason, it was merely simpler to minimize it with humor. _And I've found my coping mechanism. Neat._ Nonetheless, Sam was a scientist at heart, she'd have to test it to see if it was effective under mission conditions; then, replicate the results for verification. Samantha Carter might have been the USAF's newest hired gun, but she loved the Scientific Method. She attempted to prove her devotion to the cause over the next couple of days. It was harder than she'd expected.

Once they'd met up with Kawalsky and the newly displaced refugees, the colonel had broken them up into the Alpha and Bravo section. He'd assigned her to be his flank with Alpha and tapped his 2IC and Ferretti for Bravo. This way, there was double the chance that someone would complete the trip to Kigali. Two officers per team ensured that there'd always be a fresh set of eyes keeping watch. Amid what was shaping up to be the most heinous act of violence in modern history, Sam slept fine with the colonel on watch. She was also fine being awake, though her trigger finger itched and the hairs on the back of her neck seemed locked in the upright and fixed position.

She was not fine having her hands tied. She was not fine creeping away from the scene of the crime while whole blocks of people were summarily slaughtered. The colonel had to physically stop her from intervening once. She'd gnashed her teeth, grabbed his collar in her fists, and stared him down until he deigned to give her an explanation. Of course, he hadn't. Of course, she hadn't needed him to. As a soldier, she followed the orders she was given. As a scientist, she explored theories based on facts. And her theory that her sole effort would have saved more lives than it cost? Wasn't based on anything of the kind. There wasn't enough cynicism in all of Peterson AFB to get out a joke out of her, then.

The colonel didn't reprimand her because she hadn't compromised the mission. Didn't matter, she reprimanded herself, because she could have. This wasn't a field for emotional people or for people who couldn't leave heart at home when the time came. Sam had failed at that and that might have exposed her CO and their group to almost certain death. She wouldn't do that again. When she'd been allowed into the fold, Sam had made certain unspoken promises. Not the least of them was to be as good as her reputation, to never give up, and to risk life and limb for country and countrymen. That last one, she'd made long ago but it meant more than ever now.

Next time she heard the tell-tale howling of the suffering, Sam calmly, if stiffly, nudged her charges deeper into the brush behind the houses they were using as cover and carried on. She wanted to go in there with her superior guns and her superior officer and just _STOP_ this. Thing was…the numbers never lied and, as a woman of science, Sam was a stickler for the numbers. She held on tighter to her gun anyway.

She didn't rest so well during either watch this time, which turned out to be for the best. On the second to last night before they were scheduled to return to the States, Sam had the late evening watch. They'd taken refuge in a conspicuously empty house on the outskirts of Rwanda's capital city. The streets had been empty on their entrance but neither she nor the colonel had been fooled. For weeks now, it had been a veritable ghost town, the presence of UNAMIR personnel mostly relegating the fighting and killing to its outlying areas.

This place wasn't safe for them or their refugees; it was just where they'd be spending the night. Every person wasn't a soldier. Some were teachers, ministers, or doctors. Some were children and Sam had all the sympathy she could muster for that, so she walked a little slower and pushed a little less. Her CO at her back was the polar opposite. Because these people were important, to the future of this country and to its people and to its children; he pushed harder. Something else they'd argued—argued? Yes, argued—over in low tones when they deemed it safe enough to blink.

"You command with your sympathy and you'll be sympathizing with a corpse," he'd said in his matter-of-fact manner. Humor hadn't touched his tongue in days. They had been out of contact with Bravo section for an innumerable number of hours and he was feeling the strain. She was feeling everything he was because that was the way she followed the leader.

"Is it so wrong that I don't want to run them into the ground while saving their lives," she'd asked without expecting a true answer. She knew the risks of letting her compassion rule and she knew how to shut that down when the time came. She just felt that the disengagement of humanity was a problem this country already had and wasn't something she wanted to contribute to. That, she hadn't said, thus, it was the first thing he heard.

"You're capable of a lot, Captain," he'd remarked with an expression that was part reproof and part, well, sympathy. "This, you're not capable of." He gave her a firm pat on the shoulder and turned into the center of their haven. Their half of the refugees, sans unadorned peacekeepers, were quietly traumatized, arguably content to huddle together and disappear into the mob. The colonel was someone they feared and revered. He'd shown more often than Sam that he would permanently deal with those that threatened them. He showed, too, that he would never hurt _them_. He was the kind of distraction anyone could use. So, Sam used him.

When it was her turn to keep watch, she'd edged into the open doorway to get a sitrep of the most easily observed surrounding areas. The colonel had just performed a circuit of the building from the outside, with an eye toward any covert company rolling up from either the hind entrance or the front. It had been all clear and Sam had been relieved. They were a day's travel—if it was easy, more if not—from their rendezvous point. She was ready to see these people off into better hands. She may have been her mother's daughter, but she still didn't know what to say. To those who spoke English, there were no words. To those who did not, there were no gestures. An embrace could never be enough.

Upon seeing that things were pretty much situation normal (i.e., deserted) outdoors, Sam settled down to keep her ears out and her eyes up. The colonel had settled down near the rear door to rest. _Ever the guard dog_, she mused, noting that he slept like a well-downed log but roused at the slightest sound. She envied that. She envied most of the attributes that made him such an effective commander, she wasn't sure she'd ever learn any of them.

She was steeped in fervently calculating the odds that any of her natural abilities would include any of his when she heard shouting out of eye view. Clutching her rifle close, Sam attempted to rubber neck her way into the Covert Hall of Fame to catch a look without revealing her position.

A handful of doors down, there was a standoff occurring by moonlight. The opponents were so unevenly matched that Sam's already upset stomach turned. Something lethal gleamed and Sam didn't think, nor did she hesitate.

But when she was finished, she did round up her troupe, and her colonel, and hauled ass. It was the second best decision she had made so far after coming here at all. She didn't spend any time regretting that first mortal decision. None, really. Necessary evils were necessary, after all.

Three days later found Sam curled up in a corner of the Ops lounge, staring at a month-old hockey game and wondering who could possibly find it entertaining. She didn't, but it shut down the echoes of her first mission. Logically, she hadn't expected it to be sunshine and roses. Special and, particularly Covert, Operations generally meant just the opposite. It was silly that she couldn't sleep, silly that the idea of meat made her ill, and that she had a sudden terrible aversion to knives.

Maybe she'd just anticipated that the universe would take a rain check on troubling her conscience on what was ostensibly her first day at the fair. Maybe she'd thought she was a harder being than she was and she was deluding herself into thinking otherwise. She wasn't really her father's daughter and she wasn't worthy of being on this team. God, she missed Nellis.

Her ears pricked at the sound of vulcanized boot soles sticking to the floor. A faint, disbelieving, "The hell?" made her smile and shake her head. She didn't turn around, only shifted imperceptibly to free up the arm rest on the chair beside her. Lou fell onto the cushion, grunting with exhaustion and growling when the old seat cushion deflated, loudly.

Sam kept her eyes trained away so he wouldn't see her laughing. He saw it anyway.

"Just for that, you can wake us up for laps in the morning."

The captain swept her gaze back to him in puzzlement. One, she was pretty sure there was no rule against laughing at Ferretti, because he was Ferretti and that was his reason for existing. Two, she hadn't actually been to any of her teammates' quarters so far and that came with whole other connotations she'd rather avoid. On the other hand, he had to know that. _He's challenging me._ She narrowed her eyes at him and decided to make him work for his status from here on out. _Two chickens can play that game._

"You got it, sir."

"Thought you'd go for that." He settled, forearm brushing hers and to her surprise dropping a sweating can of cola into her hand. Raising her eyebrow, she wordlessly asked him the deal. He shrugged and popped the top on a can of his own. "Yo, Charlie, turn it up!"

With a shaking of his head, Kawalsky cranked up the volume on the game just in time for the Avalanche to score. Collectively, all three men came to their feet with manly shouts and fist pumps. Sam stayed off of hers and waited to be inspired.

It didn't happen at first. She saw men in bulky jerseys and unflattering headgear essentially figure skating with glorified wooden golf clubs. The problem wasn't that Sam didn't get the rules, it was that she didn't get the game. _Why would anyone want to-_

She leaned forward in her chair and blinked in awe of the instant replay of a hockey puck smacking into the side of a goalie's head. It was horrible. It was wince-worthy. It was fascinating. Sam was taken back to her high school physics course and Newton's Laws. She wondered what the mass of a regulation hockey puck was and gave it a fair guess to calculate force. The result: _Ouch._ Also: _Now, this is entertainment._ Sam also liked boxing; she didn't wonder if there was a correlation there.

Apparently, this had been a pretty contentious game and there were plenty of 'accidental' collisions of body, puck, and hockey stick to keep Sam amused. It was about all that did and she was fine with that. She hadn't gotten to exercise these mental muscles in a while. Maybe it was time.

The game sucked. The Avalanche lost. Her team groused but Sam grinned anyway. When all else failed, there was science to entertain her and _that_ she could cheer on. The boys wouldn't know any better.

Sam was just—pointedly—chucking her can in the trash while the guys were gathering to leave. She imagined they'd either be heading back to quarters or home. They'd been debriefing pretty much since they had stepped off the plane and were finally finished. If there had been anything waiting for Sam at home, she'd have been rushing to get there. There wasn't, just the echoes and she'd had quite enough of them.

"Hey, Carter, what are you doing tonight?" The colonel rocked coolly on the balls of his booted feet, his trademark 'bored' tic. Sam shoved her hands in her pockets and wondered what he was offering. She didn't want to be alone, definitely not, but…she didn't want to give her CO the wrong idea about her. This was an area where she had a little experience and none of it good. _Okay, Sam, tread carefully here._

"Uh, no idea, sir." She rubbed her hands down the front of her pants to wipe away the excess condensation from her soda and the sweat that was slicking her palms. She stuffed them, fisted, back into her pockets. "What's up?"

He was giving her that look again. She pursed her lips and tried to hold his gaze. He sought something out in her face and she hoped he found it. Like the first time, he gave no indication either way, pivoting toward the rest of the team and the doorway and beckoning her to follow.

"Officers' Club. Let's play pool."

There was still a tight knot at her core but Sam ignored it in favor of following Ferretti and Kawalsky in the colonel's wake. Now pool was a game she knew. Ferretti chattered, her CO and his 2IC bantered, and Sam finally managed not to think. It was a temporary reprieve and Sam couldn't have been happier.

It was the first time in days.

~!~

Sam was twenty-six years old the first time she killed someone on an op. It wouldn't be the first time that haunted her, however. That had been at a distance with a barren field and a church between her and her objective. He had been an unavoidable casualty and, in passing, she would always regret that and how many like him there would be after. But, it was her second victim was that rode her hard weeks later.

It had been a kid and she had known him on sight. He couldn't have been more than fifteen but he was wielding a long blade at a four-year-old with the know-how of a skilled butcher.

_Sam didn't blink, nor did she hesitate._

She had already run into him once in those dark days. He had been patrolling with another boy not much older than he, making a circuit of the church's forward grounds. She'd let him go unpunished in spite of coming too close to her section of the perimeter. She'd let him go because he'd laughed. He'd laughed at something, anything the other boy had said, and reminded her that he was just a little boy. He was a little boy playing an adult game and he could still learn better. That was one of the many mistakes she'd made on mission one, thinking she had the right to decide 'better.'

Nevertheless, he hadn't learned, if he even could have.

And in the last moments of his life, he hadn't seemed much like a boy, but rather like a monster with its quarry. He'd sought to play with the mortality of someone more vulnerable than him and that wasn't something she could allow. She'd had her orders and her conscience to think of. Not that she'd thought, not that there'd been time.

_'At any cost…'_

So, she'd ended him and saved the little girl instead. He was a prisoner of propaganda, he was a zealot with a cause. Whatever he truly was, he'd had a weapon and beautiful smile once and that was the contradiction she doubted she'd ever understand.

_The things that man does to man. Boy, I don't know_, she thought, nightmared, and dreamed with a shudder. She had seen more going in and coming out than the news channels that sold themselves as hard-hitting would ever dare broadcast. The world they catered to wasn't ready to watch travesty of that magnitude. Sam hadn't been ready to watch it and she had chosen to go. Afterward, she wasn't ready to acknowledge she'd even been there. It was better to pretend to have done nothing than to have, in fact, done little.

Or so she thought, amid bouts of self-doubt and rigorous team training. If she cared her heart out about being a better teammate, a better Ops officer, she didn't have to think about being an ersatz peacekeeper with the unachievable task. She didn't have to remember all the ways they hadn't actually maintained peace anywhere—or how many times in the future they wouldn't either. That wasn't in their job description. Didn't mean the truth didn't sting, in all tenses. She dreamed about that, too.

But she learned to run it off and that was what let her sleep at night. When running it off failed, she learned to joke about it. Once that began to hurt too much, she joked about something else. Before she knew it, she sounded just like the boys. It wasn't being cliché or conforming; it was survival. All she needed was a phantom of her CO's hand on her shoulder to let her know she was doing all right.

Six weeks after Rwanda, she paid the colonel back for his kindness and shoved him into a puddle. She, then, ran for her life. Two weeks after that, and she imagined much scheming and conniving in the interim, he shoved right back. He was damned fast for an old bird much less a full-bird and she learned firsthand not to underestimate Jack O'Neill even at play. His reputation was well-earned and rock solid.

She still gave the chase all she had and tried her hardest to stop being afraid of blades and men.

~!~

She was two laps into her solo run the first time she met Jonas Hanson.

The guys were out like a light in base quarters and Sam had energy to burn. The vitamins had helped, as had the habit. It was a point of personal pride that Sam ran even on mornings when they didn't. They'd grouse and moan and poke fun, but she knew they looked at her with a little more respect because of it. The colonel had said a long time ago that she'd already proven herself; and Sam would feel like she had eventually. For now, she was still trying to feel comfortable in her own skin and her own shoes. She felt a lot closer to it when she ran.

She was in the midst of taking her usual illogical path across the parade grounds when her object in motion was bodily acted upon by an unbalanced force. Acceleration calculations and force equations spun through her head along with an arbitrary pain estimation right before she hit the ground. And hit the ground she did with an audible _oof!_

Blinking away silver floaters and—hey!—visible, if imaginary, stars in her eyes, she blinked up at the blurry figure wavering above her head. She couldn't really _see _him so much as his silhouette and the absence of detail that must have been his face. The growing light behind him painted him in stark relief and it wasn't comforting.

Sam was a detail woman. She worked from detail, lived from detail, and interacted from it. He was just a quandary in the dead of dawn and she was vulnerable without backup. The detail woman mentally calculated how much effort and force would be required to bring him down without going down with him. _I can take him_, she assured herself. She was mostly sure.

"Hey," he said all of the sudden and struck Sam dumb. She vaguely noted a hand reaching down for her and that she didn't flip him on his ass immediately was a testament to how much the fall must have winded her. Instead, she took his hand and let him pull her back to her feet.

She was starting to be able to see him more clearly. Dust brown hair and blue eyes were dull in the morning light. He seemed to have a permanent faint smirk on his lips. She didn't know the face and, so, clearly didn't know the name either, but she could find out.

"You must be new on base," he said by way of introduction.

She nodded in confirmation. _No harm in being friendly. _"And you?"

"Nah, been here a while. Just got back in town."

Sam gave an 'ah' of comprehension. _Must be one of our guys._ "Well, welcome back, sir."

"It's just Jonas," he corrected. "I don't do that whole rank thing."

Sam's eyebrow gave a twitch. She was pretty sure that whole 'rank thing' came with the territory. _If Kawalsky can get away with it, I suppose anybody can._

"If you say so…Jonas."

"That's more like it." His smirk unfurled into a more becoming smile and Sam definitely saw the appeal in it. "So, you didn't tell me your name."

"Captain Samantha Carter," she said, because Sam did do the rank thing. All she did was the rank thing. That is, unless she was doing the surname thing, which was all the colonel's fault, like most things.

"Then, I should tell you I'm Captain Jonas Hanson. Looks like we don't have to do the rank thing after all. How about that?" He lifted his chin with a quasi-smug grin. Boyish and ruggedly handsome at once, Sam could only shake her head. He'd fit right in with her guys.

"How about it," she replied rhetorically. He was too interested by half and Sam wasn't ready to get mixed up in a base romance just yet, if ever. _That way lies danger_, said her gut and she was definitely in the business of listening to that nowadays. She smiled politely and started moving again. In the general direction of away from the handsome stranger.

"So," he said as he began to follow, "you're running." He kept up easily in spite of the fact he didn't seem to be dressed for it.

Sam snorted less than politely, "So I am."

The wind rushed and bent around her thighs and calves which were bare beyond the baggy black shorts she wore. She'd gotten her BDU allotment a short eternity ago, but she had a soft spot for the first clothes she'd ever gotten on base. At her age with her face, she looked like a trainee anyway, so she never minded the second looks she got as she ran with the team. If she was going to sweat and strain and pant, she might as well do it in comfort.

For the first time, however, she wished she was wearing pants. _There's something about men and legs. I'll never understand it._ She didn't usually care since it was only the guys, occasionally including Lieutenant Simmons and Janet, looking at her, but she was not a fan of being ogled by random men who'd knocked her on her ass during her laps. It didn't put her in a good mood and they would not appreciate her taking it out on them later. She wouldn't appreciate the eventual ass-chewing she'd get because of it either.

Unfortunately, certain things were unavoidable.

Like captains named Hanson and the dawn and the questioning, tickled glances between CO and 2IC as she approached the training center with her newest acquisition in tow.

"Morning, sir," she said with what passed for a salute on this team. It was sloppy but meaningful. He returned it with gusto and handed her the steaming cup of coffee he'd been drinking from a second ago.

"Drink and be merry. But preferably shower soon after." His dancing eyes lit on Jonas before looking back at her with an eyebrow waggle. A tip of the head was enough to let him know what she thought of whatever he was imagining. He absolutely did not care. So began a day filled with endless ribbing. With an eye roll, she thought, _Might as well play along._

She winked puckishly. "You got it, sir."

He nodded toward the showers. "In ya go, Carter." She raced inside and was only too glad to hear Kawalsky put a stop to Jonas' attempt to pursue.

"Whoa there, big guy. I'm pretty sure the captain can scrub her own back just fine. She'll give you a call if she wants some help."

Not likely, Sam decided, and didn't think about it again.

At least, not for quite a while.

~!~

That evening, Sam showed up to the colonel's monthly barbecue early. It was supposed to be monthly, but whenever one had been scheduled, they'd been called out of town on an op. This was the first one they'd managed to make it to. She supposed 1994 was a banner year for the Ops trade, despite it being a crappy year for the world at large.

It was also the first time Sam was going to get to see the guys outside of work. Sure, they spent an inordinate amount of time together due to training and checking each others' reports for accuracy and consistency, but they never went out for drinks or out to dinner just as friends. They did all that on base in the guise of teambuilding. The Officer's Club, the mess, the training grounds. Sam had scored in more touch football games out there than even Ferretti.

If the rumor mill was to be believed—and it could be more accurate than even intel from the Brass—several of the teams were considering stealing her from Ops Team One for the spring base games. She knew that any such attempt would fail, but it was nice to be appreciated for taking down guys twice her size without breaking a copious sweat. O'Neill had been right, the extra training had come in handy.

Shifting impatiently on her sandaled feet, Sam knocked on the front door of the nice, average house on the end of a quiet street. The colonel's monster of a pickup truck was the only thing that gave any indication that he lived here. The garden was lush but well-kempt. The grass was cut if a little trampled, she guessed from the busy feet of the colonel's son. Sam hadn't had the pleasure of even seeing a picture of him, as he didn't like to keep those sorts of things visible as a matter of security, but he talked about him as often as he breathed. Charlie was a lucky kid.

When the door finally opened, Sam concluded that Sara was damned lucky, too. It was the colonel in a pair of worn blue jeans and a faded Air Force Academy tee. It fit like old, comfy skin that he had just slipped into. The bare feet didn't hurt either. Well beyond her tendency to blush over such observations, Sam grinned mysteriously. Her CO narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously.

"I don't like that look on you, Carter. What are you thinking?"

Sam adjusted her lips to smile prettily, innocently, and overall unconvincingly. This was their game. "Me, sir?"

"Yes, you of the Level Three hand to hand combat training. What are you thinking?"

"Just that what Janet's nurses say is true, sir." She wandered past him as soon as he stepped aside.

"And what's that, Captain?" He had aimed for authoritative and landed at assertively flummoxed. _Can't wait to tell Janet about this._ She grinned proudly as she shrugged off her denim jacket.

"That you're as dashing in jeans as you are in a hospital gown, sir. Even if you are grumpy."

"I'm not grumpy," he scowled, sending Sam an especially dark look. Its effect was dampened by the growing redness of his ears, which only served to be even more disarming. Sam was having entirely too much fun at her CO's expense.

Sam snapped her head toward the amused chuckling that came from the direction of the staircase ahead. _Gotta be Sara. That's the laugh he talks about._ She was trying to stifle it behind her hand and failing. Like a contagion, the laughter spread and Sam's face nearly hurt with it. The colonel grumbled about respect and humiliation and stormed away in a mockery of insult, leaving the two women alone.

They finally calmed down long enough to share a conspiratorial grin. Sara O'Neill descended the last few steps to shake Sam's hand. "You must be Captain Carter. I hear you're keeping my husband and his band of lost boys in line."

Sam mimicked a patent O'Neill grin and nodded jauntily. "I do my best, ma'am."

"It's Sara, please. I get enough 'ma'am' from the rest of Jack's subordinates. You're in my home as a guest and a friend. It's Sara."

Sam had always been told not to piss off the hostess. She didn't see any sense in starting now. "Then, I'm glad to be here, Sara." The woman squeezed her hand again gently before letting go.

"And I'm glad to have you," said the elder blonde to the younger. "Now, let's get out to the grill before Jack douses everything that isn't Charlie's in beer."

The captain shuddered. "Beer?" She liked alcohol as much as any of her teammates but as seasoning? Not so much.

"He says it gives the meat flavor." That she thought that claim was dubious at best came across loud and clear. Sam decided that she and Sara O'Neill might yet be the best of friends. _Between my sarcasm and hers, his won't stand a chance._ Sam was totally planning how best to get one over on her CO next.

"Is the flavor 'gross,' by chance?"

"I ask him this all the time. He never answers."

Sam patted her shoulder in empathy. "He's that way about way more than beer."

"Oh, believe me, I know."

Sam all but cackled with glee when they came upon the colonel on the backyard deck, applying Guinness as liberally as pepper to the ribs on the pit. The colonel was so out of his league, he wouldn't be able to find the ball field much less daylight when they were through. Sam was pretty sure she was just short of hunched over like a proverbial Snidely Whiplash, her plotting was so apparent.

What could she say; they hadn't taught subtlety at the Academy.

"Sir, put down the beer and back away slowly."

He spun around quickly, managing to look both incredibly defiant and unspeakably guilty with the iconic stout bottle in his hand. _Oh, they've definitely had this fight before._

"Hey, Carter, what's up?"

"I'm hoping your taste in food," she retorted. She only dared go this far with Sara beside her. Sara who was smirking and on the verge of giggling again.

Her CO shifted his gaze from her to his wife and back again. "You're colluding, I can tell."

"Don't know what you mean, sir." For a man with so vast a sense of humor, he had eyes made for plumbing the depths of the soul. _ I am not about to start shuffling my feet. This is not high school._ One foot twitched and scuffed against the floorboards. The other followed suit. She absolutely didn't swear out loud. It was under her breath. Mostly.

"There's no way you're pulling the wool over my eyes here, Captain. I'm the king of plotting and scheming. It is my domain and you are not horning in on it. Come on, what gives?"

Saving them both from themselves, Sara stepped in. She walked over to her husband and relieved him of the Guinness. Sam heaved a sigh of relief. The colonel murmured in disappointment. She stifled the urge to pat him affectionately on the head. He might have given every indication of being a chastised puppy, but his bite and his bark went hand in hand. She knew that for a fact.

_Better to keep my distance and my silver bars, thank you very much._ She smiled wanly when the colonel stormed by yet again after being banished from the barbecue grill. Sara was taking over and Sam thought that had to be for the best.

Things kept looking up when she heard a medley of the doorbell ringing and sundry unique knocks at the front door. _Didn't even notice there was a doorbell._ Seeing that there was nothing left for her to do while she waited for Sara to salvage their meal, she headed back inside to see who else had arrived.

Colonel O'Neill was still grumbling as he let everyone in. The team's dedicated medical officer was the first in, pausing momentarily to pop a kiss onto the colonel's cheek as she came. He drew her into a brief hug and they shared a quick laugh.

It gave Sam a moment of pause because she never saw them do that on base. Scuttlebutt, if the Air Force gods would forgive her borrowing the term, was that they had known each other for years. She'd never seen a need or had a chance to ask. _Score another one for the grapevine._

Once Janet set eyes on her, Sam finally had something to do. They headed out to the deck as the boys and their girlfriends filtered in. Sam was halfheartedly aware of Lieutenant Simmons' voice as he introduced the colonel to the pretty NCO from Supply he had brought along with him. Sam was looking forward to someone else getting the romantic grief tonight. Speaking of which…

"So, Sam, I heard you spent a little quality time with a certain rival team captain this morning," Janet prompted with a wicked smirk. Sara leaned against the railing beside her as she let the meat rest, all ears and all interested, eyes saying, _Do tell._

Sam scoffed. _How the hell did I get cornered this fast? _"I wouldn't call it spending time so much as running for my life."

"Oh?" Sara interjected. "Which captain are we talking about here?"

Before Janet could get another word in, Sam answered for her. "Captain Jonas Hanson. We had a run-in near the bleachers. He knocked me down. I got back up. He apparently thought I was playing hard-to-get and followed me back to Ops. I have no idea why."

"You can't possibly have _no_ idea why," Sara offered. Still not so far from some hard days in Flight School, Sam took that personally.

"I did _not_ lead him on. I don't do that." She fought not to cross her arms across her chest and mostly succeeded. This was feeling like one of those days again.

Her CO's wife immediately laid a hand on top of her arm and held on with a contrite expression. "I didn't mean it that way, Captain." She gave the stiff limb a squeeze and released her. "I meant that you're an attractive woman. If he's the _first_ person on base to blatantly pursue you, they're training 'em up a lot better than they used to."

Sam blew out a breath and shrugged, letting the moment pass without another thought. "Sorry. Had a few bad experiences so I've learned to nip that sort of thing in the bud before it spreads." The Gulf War had been some of the best and worst days of her career.

"Trust me," Sara said, "I can imagine." She said it with enough gravity that Sam wondered just what Sara O'Neill had seen as the wife of a man like the colonel. _I'll have to ask sometime._ But not today.

"So, about Jonas Hanson?" Janet prompted, as outwardly eager as each of them to move on to lighter topics.

"Presumptuous," Sam summed up the man in a single word. He'd knocked the wind out of her, but she wasn't sure he'd actually apologized for it. Now, she really disliked him.

"Sounds like someone you could love to hate," Janet reasoned with a suggestive elbow nudge to Sara who concurred.

"Or hate to love."

"Or neither of the above," Sam concluded out of the trifecta. "Trust me, he's not on my 'nice' Christmas list this year."

"I can vouch for the fact that 'naughty' is much, much better," Sara volunteered with an all too revealing leer. Sam groaned. That, she did not need to know. Janet covered her face, which was red and reddening down to her neck.

"It's official. I'll never be able to look my CO in the eye again," Sam whined.

"Oh, Sam, the eyes are nice, but there are definitely other things you could focus on instead."

Sam covered her ears. She was not listening to this. "We are not talking about how nice the colonel's assets are," she chanted in a sing-song voice. It was pretty effective actually.

Until the man in question showed up.

He came around to stand between her and her captive audience of Janet and Sara. _He's doing that twinkling thing again._ She pretended not to be to faintly horrified. Why? Because he only did that when her worst nightmare had come true. She didn't have to ask if he'd been listening. It was written all over his dimpling, smirking, eyebrow waggling face.

He offered her a beer—a Guinness, _the bastard!—_and swaggered away. _Yep, definitely listening._ If she'd had doubt before, she had none now. He was going to mock her for the rest of the night. She muttered, "Sweet," dryly before taking a gulp of beer. It was cold and it would keep her from anymore embarrassing intrigue where her CO was concerned, and she was all about avoiding the intrigue.

"So," Kawalsky said as he ambled on over to them. "You and Hanson are a thing now, Sam?"

Sam shook her head vigorously. Nothing like a juvenile response to a valid question to make her case. "No. I don't even know him."

Kawalsky sipped his own beer with an uncharacteristically neutral expression. Humor-wise, he tended to occupy the center ground between Ferretti and O'Neill. It wasn't like him not to smile. Because it wasn't like him, it set off klaxons in Sam's head. She had never exactly had subtle instincts.

"Something the matter?" Kawalsky's expression shifted to an uneasy wince. He sort of rolled his shoulders and shifted on his feet. He wasn't as cool as he'd been in Saudi Arabia last week; he wasn't even as cool as he'd been on their ten-lapper this morning. He was sweating full metal jackets and looking for an exit strategy.

He wasn't about to get one. "Whatever it is, sir, spit it out." She fell into formality when making demands of her superiors. It was the only way to keep either side from taking things personally. She couldn't let him offend her, they had to work together.

"Truth is, Cap'n, that I can't tell you what to do. You're a grown woman and a good enough officer that you don't _need_ to be told to keep yourself free and clear of 'questionable' associations." He hesitated to go further, trying to impress the importance of what he was saying upon her with a mere look. She thought he'd regret how successful he was.

"I suppose that makes Hanson a 'questionable association,' then, sir?"

He pursed his lips and nodded brusquely. His posture screamed his discomfort as hers likely did. _One of the bravest men I've ever known looks like he wants to run for his life._ She smiled grimly, and watched as he began to stage a tactical retreat to the grass, where everyone else had gathered to either argue about hockey or toss the football around. Charlie was holding court on his own with the other ladies of the group. He seemed to be balancing ego with embarrassment if his burning ears were any indication. _That kid will break more hearts than Lou_, she predicted.

Kawalsky'd kept his head down, leaping from the deck to the yard and jogging over to their assembled team members. She had trained her ears to pick their voices out of a crowd of more than this; consequently, his, "Mission accomplished-kinda," came through immediately.

The colonel saluted with his beer bottle, shoving a deck chair in the major's direction with his foot. Kawalsky sat down and sat back with a visible sigh. Sam crossed her arms with the realization that someone had given their 2IC orders to talk to her, and that there was only one person who it could have been.

Leaving without saying goodbye, Sam took the deck steps one at a time. Ignoring Sara's whispered, "Oh, hell, what has he done now," she strolled across the yard, past Charlie and his harem, past Lieutenant Simmons and his tinkering with the FM radio, toward her team and their lazy game of hot potato. Just as she arrived, the football sailed in an arc over her head from Ferretti's hands to their CO's hold. He didn't launch it again; she was blocking his light.

"Carter."

"Sir." She waited and observed.

He leaned sideways to look up at her. She thought he must have some impressive peripheral vision if he preferred it over facing her head-on. He was welcomed to evade her, but she'd still be standing here.

"Something I can help you with, Captain?" He sat his empty beer bottle and the ball in the grass and regarded her hands-free. To anyone else, that might have been nothing, to Sam it was preparation. _He's expecting a fight. I'd hate to disappoint._

"Just wondering if I should get used to hearing my CO's concerns coming out of someone else's mouth."

He squinted at her quizzically and she was almost convinced. Jack O'Neill wore cluelessness like he wore his wings, with enviable effortlessness. If she hadn't seen parts of his personnel file, she wouldn't know he was a man who'd managed to survive three months in an Iraqi prison and come out relatively intact. She wouldn't know that just a handful of years ago a parachute malfunction had landed him in the middle of Iran with no prospect of rescue and a low probability of survival. He'd dragged himself out of there, broken legs and all, and he'd come home. She couldn't have told it from the way he was staring at her now, but he was far from a fool.

She wasn't any closer to one.

"Colonel, I don't understand why I'm still on the team if you think I can't watch my own back." Her commanding officer sucked in a gusty breath and pulled himself up straighter in his chair. He wasn't pulling clueless anymore, merely resigned with a casual slant. They were having this conversation and on a day that had begun so well.

"There are two things I hate about command, Carter." He counted off on his fingers, "The first is sending good men—good _people_ off to do die, and the second is politics." He rested his head on his hand. "Can't get away from either one of 'em. I think about quitting, I think about throwing in the towel and spending the next decade teaching my kid to play hockey."

"Could be good," she remarked. She didn't mean it, she didn't want him gone. He was good where he was, doing what he did. He was better than good.

His mouth tipped up wanly like he heard what she didn't say and felt the same. "That's what I think. But then I get to thinking about the next guy or I think about the guys upstairs and I wonder who's going to push their buttons if I don't. Who's going to have to get burned if it isn't me?"

Kawalsky, who hadn't vacated his seat despite Sam's glare passing over him, objected. "Come on, Jack, you know I can be just as big a pain in the ass as you. Lou'll help me."

His head canted in tacit acceptance but his expression didn't waver. "This is my gig till it kills me, Carter. I accepted that the day I realized that my son was nine months old and that I'd spent roughly seven of those months on a different continent. This is the life I chose, for good or bad."

Sam blew a renegade tendril of hair out of her face, baffled. "Sir, I don't understand what that has to do with you advising me through Kawalsky. If you have a directive for me, you have every right to tell me directly. Sir, I have every right to hear it directly from _you_."

He quirked his brows up at her with interest and it wasn't the polite sort. "And I bet you'd like an explanation to go with that 'directive,' wouldn't you, Captain?" Sensing that she was treading on unsteady ground, Sam held off on answering.

Evidently mollified by her reticence, the colonel waved her toward a seat they'd left empty, maybe even for her. She sat down gingerly, unsure if she was about to be dressed down or terminated outright. He hung his hands clasped together between his knees and she realized that while she'd been focused on him, Ferretti and Kawalsky had effectively closed ranks with them and completed the circle. _What a sight we must be_, she reflected with anxiety-laced fondness.

"Carter, I have no doubt that you're well-acquainted with all manner of military man." She didn't need to nod, he didn't seem to notice. "You've flown in conditions some of the macho sons-of-bitches in Washington haven't even dreamed of. You're good and I'm glad you're with us." She did nod this time, because she was glad to be here and she was glad he was glad. It was a complicated feeling. "Not everyone is."

"Sir," she asked without asking, a Gordian knot of dread winding its way around her throat.

"What I'm saying…Sam, is that you need to choose your friends carefully. Because there will always be someone waiting to pull the rug right from under you to see if you can cope." Sam curled her fingers over the edge of the deckchair and sank her short nails into the weather-treated wood. He didn't use her given name—never had. When he did, it was nothing good.

"What does that mean, sir?" After this many months, Sam had thought she'd learned everything she needed to be _in_ here. Her team members accepted her with little fanfare, save for all the quiet talk of a birthday excursion they thought she hadn't heard about. They didn't agonize over her lack of field experience and lauded her for her strengths; with a rifle, with a knife, in hand-to-hand. What she didn't know, they could teach her. She was their secret weapon and she'd gotten so used to the treatment she'd forgotten it wasn't an opinion shared by everyone.

"That means you keep being good," he shrugged and lowered his eyes to stare toward the ground. She noted the way the four of them blocked out the glare from his newly installed yard lights. Together they could cast a shadow so big, sometimes, Sam could hardly comprehend it.

"And you, sir?" She hadn't forgotten about his confession, she couldn't have. It felt wrong for a man who had so doggedly survived so much to surrender to any idea of defeat, much less one as lackluster as this one.

"And I'll keep having your back, Captain." He reached out and laid a firm hand on her shoulder. She leaned into it without thinking and he only pulled away once she was upright again. Another one of their rituals. "But it's hard to do that if I'm worrying about who your friends are. Like Kawalsky said, you're a big girl and you're free to tell us both to shove it, but it matters. With the Brass, it does."

Feeling like the fool she'd sworn she wasn't, she flexed the tense fingers of her tense hands, "Why?"

"Because, now that you're one of mine, my problems are your problems. So are my enemies." He choked on the word 'enemies' and it was easy to see that it was spite, not fear that did it.

"And vice versa," she replied, concluding truths wholly different than she'd predicted before. She'd gotten the sense that there were people who didn't much like the colonel before; she hadn't understood just how many they were talking.

Fully confessed, the colonel slouched down opposite her and closed his eyes. Their team mates drew back, leaving them in a weak huddle. "So few words and, yet, so right. Knew there was a reason we kept you around."

She smiled, her questions hardly answered but multiplying. "I knew you just liked me for my entertainment value."

"D'oh!" he snapped his fingers. "Lou, you were supposed to distract her before she noticed."

The youngest man held up his hands in deference. "Tried and failed. Sorry, Jack."

"Great," he dragged out. "Now, who'll run around the base like a hopped-up Chihuahua while we drink coffee and eat the doc's donuts?"

Sam crossed her arms. "Janet brings donuts in the morning?" That explained the mess Kawalsky always made of his mission reports, given that he liked to work on them first thing in the morning._ The boys have been holding out on me._ She'd known she wasn't _that_ fast.

"From now on, you guys are going first for post-mission physicals." It was the only way to get them back that didn't involve reneging on her fitness regimen and she had no plans on doing that.

They shared dismayed looks, and implored her better nature to reconsider. Didn't they know? She didn't have a better nature. She stood up, dimpling impishly at her team. "Sorry. Deception begets retribution, boys." A few encouraging claps on the back and she was on her way.

She'd gotten all the answers she was going to get out of her guys. Although they hadn't told her everything, in 189 days, she'd learned to trust them. They wouldn't leave her in the wilderness forever. In the meantime, though, there was always the grapevine and it had never let her down before.

She wondered just what Janet knew…


	2. Part I

**A Year Later**

~!~

**After Paraguay**

Sam was in the midst of demonstrating how to disarm a physically superior opponent, also known as Ferretti, for a survival training class when her pretty amazing day stopped being so amazing. Before a class of thirty-six, she went from fighting a single imposing opponent to two. One was Ferretti whom she knew and trusted. The other was definitely not one of her guys, and he did not play fair. She had already removed Ferretti's dud knife from his custody when the other guy leapt on her back.

For a second, it was like she'd been slammed with a boulder. Sam gasped, felt her heart rate begin to increase, the adrenalin hit her bloodstream, the glucose breakdown in her muscles. She didn't even have time to think _Fight or flight_ before she tossed the jackass on her back onto his back with a follow-up to the solar plexus as a parting gift.

Glowering at him, a cadet, contemptuously, she asked the class, "Can someone tell me why what he did was a very stupid idea?"

One girl raised her hand, blowing a lock of curly blonde hair out of her face as she did so.

"Cadet?" Sam acknowledged her, while refusing to let the offender up. She had a good hold on his wrist. He wasn't going anywhere. _If he tries, I really will hurt him._

"Hailey, ma'am. It was a stupid idea because you're a Level Three in hand-to-hand combat, ma'am."

Sam smiled slightly. She could hear Ferretti muttering, "Suck up," from the back of the room. She'd deal with him and his apparent lack of assistive reflexes later.

"Also because, rather than incapacitating you, the manner of his attack gave you sufficient momentum to propel him over your shoulder and onto the ground." Hailey shrugged as if it was as easy as ABC. "It was a badly planned offense."

Sam nodded in approval. "Well put, Cadet." Twisting her attacker's wrist with what probably constituted greater than necessary force, Sam decided to address him. "So, please, tell the class what you were thinking when you decided to come at me from behind."

He was scowling at her, but it was belied by his body language. He was turned on his side—admittedly, her doing—but he seemed to be trying to tuck in like an armadillo under siege. _Oh, big man's afraid of me. You should be._ She wasn't going to kick him for that, in spite of the fact that he could have seriously injured her in the middle of a training scenario. She would have liked to have a go at him, but she was pretty sure the base's liability insurance didn't cover outraged Ops captains.

"Well?"

He gritted his teeth, eyeing the way she held his wrist.

Sam guessed his hand looked a little off-color. _You should be glad all I've done is cut off your circulation. _She'd seen worse done to guerilla fighters and done worse herself. It was bordering on pathetic now that she thought about it.

She rolled her eyes and let go, stepping back lest her temper get the best of her or his the best of him.

"Well?" Her hands went to her hips, then to her pockets. She wasn't his wife and she wasn't in the business of acting like his mother. It was still all she could do not to tap her foot on the tumbling mat floor and box his ears. His landing hadn't been nearly as painful as the body slam she'd received from him. _Is there anything men don't complain about?_

"Well," he said, a medley of contrition and conceit, "I just wanted to see if you really knew what you were talking about. You know how it is, those who can't do teach."

Sam crossed her arms to keep from showing him how well she did. "I think we can agree that I do _and_ teach just fine."

"Yes, ma'am," he dipped his head.

Sam sighed. He didn't look like much more than a kid in spite of his awe-inspiring size. _I've met linebackers who'd look up to him._ Dismissing those thoughts, she decided to take pity on a show-off.

"Cadet?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Get out of my sight, now, and I'll forget this happened. If you're still here in ten seconds, you're on a bus."

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am." He leapt up onto his tree trunk legs and hightailed it out of their training center. _And that is truly for the best._

Sam turned back to the rest of her charges and gave them a fair imitation of her father's worse glare. "The first thing you apparently need to learn is the difference between a controlled exercise and a combat situation." She paced in front of the group so that she could look every one of them in the eye. "What you will be engaging here at Peterson are controlled exercises. This is not to prevent you from learning. It is to prevent you from _dying_ before you have a chance to utilize what you're learning. Can someone tell me what Major Ferretti and I were just doing, before we were so needlessly interrupted?"

Hailey was the first, and really only, to raise her hand.

"Cadet Hailey."

"Ma'am, you and the major were demonstrating a combat situation in a controlled setting."

"That's correct, Cadet. What that means is we'd previously determined the parameters of this exercise, including but not limited to, its participants and the maneuvers we intended to show you. When Cadet…" Sam thought hard for a name but none came. "When that cadet injected himself into the exercise, he did two things. He disrupted the exercise, thereby preventing me from properly instructing you on how to disarm a physically superior opponent. However, he also illustrated something very important."

She looked around again, pointedly at Hailey, and some attentive others. "The best laid plans can go to hell. There's nothing you can do except prepare for the unexpected and roll with the punches or, in my case, the body blows." She clapped her hands to signal the end of class. "Learn from every moment, cadets. I'll see you next class."

At Ferretti's shout, they all scrambled to their feet and came to attention.

Sam lifted her chin and nodded, "Dismissed."

They broke ranks and cleared out.

Once they were gone, Sam dropped onto the nearby bleachers to give her shoulder a rub. That guy had not been an easy one to throw. _I knew I should have taken up bodybuilding in high school._ Any sudden recollections of their last mission gone to hell were roundly ignored. _Not today, not with that._

Ferretti's strode over and plopped down next to her. Contrary to his default joviality, he looked wary.

"You all right, Sam?"

Sam kept rubbing her arm. The pain throbbed, but it just felt like a strain. _That seems fitting._ She nodded. "I'm fine. He was just…really big. Bigger than he looks." _The story of my life._

"Tell me about." After a moment of sitting quietly, he nudged her arm lightly. "You know I would have stepped in if I thought you needed me, right?"

She shrugged, winced, and nodded when that was the most she could do without a twinge. "Yeah, I know."

"Just wanted to make sure." He looked her up and down and she was keenly aware of the fact that he'd been around the colonel a whole lot longer than she had. _Talk about your learned behaviors. _"Speaking of back-up, why don't you and I head over to the infirmary so that Doc Frasier can have a look at you?"

Sam stiffened in her seat. She loved Janet, but she hadn't liked the infirmary since the whole battery of testing she'd had to undergo on her first day. Not the least of which was an X-ray to make sure she hadn't fractured or otherwise maimed her cheekbone. _I swear Janet actually thought someone had done that to me. Actually, a lot of people thought that._ For some reason, everyone in their enclave took even a hint at abuse seriously, though they'd never said why they worried quite so much. _Just one more secret I might never know._

"I'm really okay, Lou. It's just a strain. I'll be fine after a night with my heating pad and some aspirin."

He gave her one of his boyish, crooked smiles. "Don't go too wild, Captain. We've got an early day tomorrow."

She groaned in remembrance. "We've got an early day every day. How's tomorrow any different?"

He leaned on her again, but this was more reassurance than play. "Got a new mission coming up. Jack's gonna give us the nitty-gritty."

Her nose wrinkled at the terminology. It didn't bode anything good for them. "That bad, huh?"

He frowned in the affirmative. "It's only covert because they don't want anybody to talk about it." _He's always had a gift for stating the obvious,_ she thought. Regardless, he managed to insert a couple of layers of meaning to the definition of the sort of ops they did. The last one had been Black, but dry. She had no such confidence in the one to come.

"I know exactly how they feel." She found herself frowning, too. Looked like, soon, she'd have to find something new to laugh about. She was seriously running out of diversions.

Following a contemplative walk back to the training center, Sam and Ferretti sidled into the colonel's office while the command team was busy collecting the mission objective. In usual circumstances, there'd be a higher office briefing the lot of them. However, General McClear was a busy man and often delegated such ceremonial tasks to his subordinates. The colonel regularly had the unenviable duty of briefing other teams as well.

_Such is the life of the ranking officer in Ops._ She didn't want it; following already took more than a sufficient number of hours out of her day, she wasn't committing to that kind of workload yet. She much preferred to while away her days training upstarts and tinkering with Simmons' latest attempt to minutely improve military technology. Since Sam didn't do 'minute,' his work either went big or went boom thanks to her intervention. _The fire-resistant lab space at Nellis definitely had its perks_, she recalled guiltily.

Once she heard the colonel and Kawalsky's tell-tale banter floating through the doorway, she unconsciously straightened in her seat. After failing to stifle a grimace at the resulting pull, she glared at Ferretti, mutely daring him to sell her out to their CO. He had to have her back on this. He hunched his shoulder unclearly and she was left to wonder what he'd do. _Great, Lou unpredictable is me totally screwed._

They came to their feet at their superiors' entrance. It was more muscle memory than any need to maintain formality. As ever, the colonel shared an exasperated eye roll with his second-in-command.

"Sit," he grunted on his way to his chair. "Y'know, we'd broken Lou of that habit before you came to town, Captain."

She smothered her grin and her shrug—for different reasons. "Sorry, sir."

He raised his eyebrow doubtfully but didn't argue. Butt in seat, he opened the ubiquitous brown folder, marked _'classified'_ and began. By the end, she really wished he hadn't.

Mentally reviewing the details of their upcoming mission after the meeting, Sam was tense already. It was the stuff of nightmares. Not in the vein of Rwanda but enough. They were going full submersion in Brazil. Walk in as tourists, sneak out as fugitives. She was less upset by that idea than she was that they were about to enter another Latin American gangland. They were about to dine with honest to God kingpins and, then, they were going to shoot them in the head and relieve them of their cache of highly-prized and highly-priced imported Venezuelan weaponry.

_Go hard or go home_, she reminded herself, all the while trying not to remind herself of anything else. '_Paraguay's damned hot and muggy this time of year,_' said her rogue recollections. _'The bugs are fuckin' murder,'_ said the Ferretti of her mind with the colonel assenting and Kawalsky's amen. They'd been doing okay in the wilderness. Sam had worked to overcome her new environment and acted from her team's examples. It had been better by then, easier; the mission had been complete. After that, nothing was better and everything was hard.

Sam gave her body a shake. She didn't want this one to be hard. Her shoulder, then her back protested even this small physical response. She reached for the abused muscles near the small of her back and gave the area a firm rubbing. _Damn, I might need a muscle relaxant for this one._ Pain was an unpredictable factor out in the field and one they couldn't afford. The captain needed to be pain-free to be mission ready and she intended to be.

"Looks like Ferretti was right," said the most recognizable voice in her life today. She closed her eyes against it and dropped her seeking hands from her back, not that it made a difference now.

"Don't know what you mean, sir." She could be as obstinate as he could be. She could also converse with her CO and plan appropriate revenge for Lou at the same time.

"Sure, ya don't," he quipped with false lightness. He was regarding her with all the weight of a 40-ton Mack truck. She felt like she was carrying the world when he looked at her that way. After this morning, she felt like she'd dropped the world and was trying to make up for the fumble.

"Is there a problem, sir?"

"This is the part where you tell me, Carter. Is there?" Seeing no sense in carrying on the masquerade, Sam tilted her head in a facsimile of a nod.

"Just a little sore, sir. One of the trainees got a little enthusiastic in session this morning."

His left eyebrow rose sharply and he took a step closer. "Oh?" He managed to infuse half a dozen command requests into the simple sound.

"Yes, sir. He seemed to think Major Ferretti and my demonstration on disarming tactics could use a little…flare."

The colonel crossed his arms and began to stare her down. She shifted her weight ever so slightly despite knowing who the intensity was truly meant for. _I don't envy you, McCarty._ Ferretti had known his name though she hadn't.

"Flare?"

"He came at me from behind, sir. It was pretty funny, actually. He seemed to think I couldn't take him."

His mouth twitched, belying the ferocity simmering in his eyes. "Sounds like he got a lesson in _Carter 101_."

Sam rocked onto her toes. "Like you wouldn't believe, sir."

"So," he reached out to brush her shoulder, "you're good then? No pulls, hitches, or, dare I say it, strains?" He was doing his full-captain visual inspection. Per habit, she struggled not to respond by shying away. She went to answer with the only response that would be acceptable to either of them, but he beat her to it with a silencing wave of the hand. "Before you _even_ think about it, you should know by now that I consider being lied to a personal insult. So, think carefully—do you really want to insult me, Carter?" He peered at her the way she imagined he did to Charlie and she was buckling as she imagined Charlie would, too.

"No, sir," she murmured grudgingly. She moved automatically to shrug and was nearly successful. Hissing sharply, she reassured him, "Just a couple of strains, colonel. I'll be right as rain in time for Brazil."

Rolling his eyes, the colonel turned away to head back into his office. "It's not like we're going without you, Carter. Chill out, rest up, _relax_," he advised. "Go fishing. That always helps me when I'm all wound up."

"I'll take that under advisement, sir." She could see him mouthing her words to himself in the reflection of his office window. She briefly worried about his eyes getting stuck in the upright and rolled position. Then, she grinned. _Would serve him right for being so stuffy_, which was funny because there was no one in the chain of command less stuffy than Jack O'Neill with two l's. He told no end of jokes about the guy with one but Sam had never met him.

"I'm sure you will, Carter," he responded dryly, bringing her out of her tickled introspection. He wouldn't have appreciated the humor, she knew. "In the meantime, I want you to sidle on down to Janet's and get patched up." He silenced her again, this time with a stern glance. He wasn't kidding. "Still need you at 100 percent. Nothing less will do."

She nodded curtly, straightening at his tone. There had been an undercurrent of tension in all of her conversations with him since the briefing began. Something was up and she was the least qualified person to find out what. She was, however, the only one in residence for the time being.

"Sir, is everything all right?" It was his turn to appear confused. "You seem tense."

He laughed a little, a tad humorlessly for her taste, and dragged his fingers through his hair. She couldn't decide if that was a touch of silver she was starting to notice at the temples or just the crap lighting in the room. "Someone made a member of my team the target of an unprovoked attack. That bothers me and it should bother you."

"It does, sir, but I've dealt with it and I'm ready to move forward. I expect that the cadet in question is being issued his walking papers as we speak. He'll have to start from scratch." Whatever she'd said earlier, assault wasn't just a matter of forgive and forget. _Consequences and all that…_

He looked skeptical and inexplicably worried. "Yeah, I hope so." Picking up a snow globe like the many that littered his home, he turned it over in his hands, making blizzards and clear days of spring over and over again in turn. "What'd you say the kid's name was again?" Everyone was a kid to her CO.

"I didn't, sir." Though Sam didn't tolerate much with regard to deplorable behavior, she also made it a point not to hold someone's one stupid decision against them. The colonel had no such policy.

"So, you didn't." He put down the keepsake a touch wistfully. "What's his name, Carter?"

"Sir-"

"Someone who can't follow orders has no business in the military," spoke the near-infamous problem child of the U.S. Air Force. Sam was incredulous.

"Someone who isn't willing to push boundaries has no business in command." She stopped short, thinking she'd gone way farther than intended with that one.

"That a jab at me, Captain?" For a man normally content to keep his eyes on the horizon, he seemed suddenly determined to keep his eyes on hers. She preferred that he didn't do that.

"No, sir." She lowered her gaze to the floor. "He's Command Track. I've heard impulsiveness is one of the traits to look for." She was speaking as much from experience as out of her ass. For the most part, she just didn't want to be responsible for depriving someone else of their life's dream. The Air Force had been hers, too. _Still is. This is a reputation I don't need._

"Heard that, too," he conceded. "But," he amended, "taking shit from idiots is not." She jerked her head up quick enough to crack her stiff neck. His expression revealed a measure of disappointment and the resulting apprehension made her already tightly-coiled muscles positively twang. "You're command material already. Don't make excuses for people that aren't."

Realizing there was nothing else she could say, Sam responded with a bare, "Yes, sir." _Complimented and berated in the same statement. I'm really to making friends and influencing people today._ She couldn't afford to get on his bad side, not after everything else.

He re-opened the mission folder from earlier, a clear sign that he was shifting his attention away from her to more important things. "Give Doc Frasier my best," he said in blatant dismissal.

"Yes, sir," she countered again and hastily made tracks. The last thing she wanted was for the colonel to go looking and find her anywhere besides the infirmary in the near future. If she was lucky, the colonel would get held up with his backlog of mission reports and wouldn't have time to seek her out. If the Fates were smiling and the universe conspiring, Janet might even know what had her CO tied up in knots.

The Fates had apparently left for the Poconos because Janet was as in the dark as Sam was. Evidently, the grapevine hadn't yet produced a viable explanation with the colonel's latest mood. The universe was apparently bored by her offer since the colonel certainly found the time to call Janet to confirm Sam's presence. He'd timed it to coincide with the entrance of her teammates into the infirmary.

_Oh, I see what you did there, sir._ She pulled a smile for Kawalsky and Ferretti just the same. Seeing as the visit was just a matter of a couple of overexerted muscle groups, Janet hadn't bothered to pull the curtain. Lou hopped right up on the bed next to Sam and nodded to Janet a brisk hello.

"You here for your shots, Major?" the doctor asked in humor but with a touch of sincere warning. The team's third member in line hopped right down and left to occupy the empty place beside Kawalsky. They were sitting on the opposite bed watching with an unconvincing level of interest. It wasn't being used and Janet didn't mind so long as they weren't bothering anyone. But the fact that they could be so easily cowed by someone so petite never failed to send Sam into fits of internal giggles. Thankfully, she'd learned to hide it well.

"Can it, Captain," Kawalsky barked without much bite.

Okay, so she hadn't hidden it that well after all. The upside to spending this much time with the same people was that they were used to it. She hadn't thought that would ever happen. For once in her relatively short life, she was content enough to be wrong about something.

Watching Lou swing his feet over the side of the bed, Sam was tempted to mimic him. She would have but she didn't do that. She was the serious young gun and he was the jokester. It didn't matter that they doled out practical jokes like cigars; that was their secret, shared between them and those that knew them. Sam hid that, even from Janet, even from Sara O'Neill who she'd come to regard as a good friend. They had an image as no nonsense 'capable of killing you blindfolded and hogtied' Ops officers to protect. Thanks to the time she'd spent in the cockpit, Sam knew to take that seriously, something all four former pilots had in common.

_If your peers don't respect you, your superiors won't respect you._ That lack of respect could mean a short lifetime in POW camp if those selfsame generals decided that a team wasn't worth retrieving when the going got hard. God forbid they be unable to save themselves. Jack O'Neill's team remained a valued asset by perpetuating mission success and priceless skill. Beyond the colonel's tendency to survive just about anything, he had a knack for seeing potential and mining it for all it was worth. Many envied that ability and the notoriety heading up so many crack teams wrought.

Sam liked to think it was that gut-bound talent that had led him to her. He'd told her it had on the downswing from Paraguay and he'd given her no reason to doubt him. Naturally, some liked to say he'd had other, less pure motives for bringing her aboard, but she never gave them more than a passing snort. Not until recently anyway, not until she had the king of all clusterfucks under her belt and down on paper.

Getting walloped by a kid was just the latest and greatest of embarrassments Sam'd had to handle. That she hadn't hauled off and broken his nose was a sign that things were improving. She thought, _They've gotta be. There's really no worse this can get._

Upon realizing that she'd all but _dared_ circumstances to swing even farther out of her favor, Sam thought she might as well leap ahead of the curve.

"Janet, I've gotta catch up with the colonel at 1400, you think I can head out now?" she asked, the toes of her boots milliseconds from colliding with toes of Ferretti's as they swung in tandem. He clipped her sole in passing, she firmly nudged—see: belted—his ankle. There was much subtle, good-natured posturing to be observed by any social scientists interested in studying the nature of their pride in its natural habitat, the infirmary. _It might as well be, we spend enough time here. _ All ego and subtle understanding, a veritable anthropological heaven.

The good captain doctor pointedly put herself in the middle of their foot foray, chastising them both in an obnoxiously maternal and obnoxiously effective way: "Play nicely, children. Sam, you can go, just make sure you do what we talked about and take it easy. The strains aren't bad, but they'll get bad if you don't keep an eye on things." Janet understood, better than Sam probably, how much the various teams guarded their medical privacy, and thusly had transformed vagueness into an art form.

Sam slid off the edge of the bed. "Will do," she affirmed with a quick salute. Her first dose of muscle relaxant had already kicked in. She felt about ready to take on the Brazilians on her own. _Or sleep. Sleep is good._ She hadn't done much of that lately and no amount of her subconscious coaxing her toward it was going to change that fact. Therefore, her only option was to fill the time, until the next sunrise, until the next run with anything except closing her eyes.

_Time to see a colonel about an undercurrent. This can't go wrong at all. _She was strangely comforted by the echoes of her team that resounded in her own cynicism.

This was _a_ goal, if a questionable one, and Sam needed those badly nowadays. Hence, she was off to see the wizard. She was seriously hoping there were no falling houses nearby.

~!~

On re-entry, Sam was less than shocked to note that she could hear the colonel shouting from the end of the hallway outside the lounge. Since her teammates had scattered to the four—well, two—winds at her request, she imagined they'd either left base or were lurking nearby, too. _Good money would be on them hanging silently from the rafters._ She wished she'd thought of it first.

Easing into the lounge, she found the place as immaculate as it never was. Not a foundling coke can in sight, not a half-eaten Hershey's bar to be seen. Somebody had gone on a cleaning jag in her absence and there was nothing good that could possibly mean.

"No, sir, that's not acceptable," he went on, at volume. "She's a member of my team. If anybody should have a problem with the way she does her job, it should be me and, trust me, I've got no problem with her, sir."

Sam froze in place, because her heartbeat was loud enough to drown him out without competing with her footsteps for dominance.

"With all due respect, sir, you're playing politics with the makeup of my team and the career of one of my subordinates. Not to mention her physical safety. That's damned unacceptable, sir." He stopped for a tense moment. Sam could practically hear his grinding teeth. "She's a fine officer, General. She follows order. She's got guts. She's got instincts most ground troops would kill for. Officers like Carter are the reason we changed the rules, sir."

Sam was suddenly sure that she was supposed to exit stage left about now. She wasn't supposed to hear this. She didn't _want_ to hear this. _I need to leave._ And she turned to do so, but stopped short. _He's going to bat for me. The least I can do is stand and listen._

She tried standing, but her knees failed her at his, "Yes, sir, I'd stake my eagles on it. She's good people, General. I don't have anybody on my team who isn't." She curled up carefully in Kawalsky's old leather office chair. It was so ancient it should have squealed and turned to dust at her weight. It did neither because Simmons kept their domain running like clockwork with an occasional assist from the consummate Sgt. Siler. _Our well-oiled machine works. What the hell did I do to convince them otherwise?_

"General, I'll testify to any panel, board, or tribunal you ask me to. Carter's not only the farthest thing from a liability, she's an asset to both the Air Force and my team." He hadn't surrendered but he had stopped yelling. She could hear the impatient staccato rap of his knuckles on the desktop. For the colonel, fidgeting was usually a sign that things were going badly or in circles. He had little patience for politically correct doublespeak. "Sir, if that's all, I have duties that I need to attend to." The rap ceased. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Goodbye." He hung up the phone a little harder than necessary. Sam flinched. She wished she'd left after all.

Her CO was an easy man to read for someone that knew him. Other people would have found his silence meaningless in this moment, but she knew better. He was quiet and he was still when he was uneasy. When there was something amiss, he was the first to know and the rest knew by his sudden shift in persona. The man in the office twenty feet away was the man Sam knew in the field. He could be merciful or deadly depending on what was on the opposite side of a trembling shrub. She had a feeling he wasn't thinking mercy today.

"Might as well come in here, Carter." She didn't ask how he knew she was out here. That wasn't a question anyone ever asked anymore. It was just presumed that he would know and questioned when he didn't.

"Yes, sir," she answered instantly, wrenching herself out of the chair and to attention in his office before either could say, 'Hoorah.' He took the time to check her out, no doubt searching for signs of permanent damage. He'd find none on the outside; he had no window to see in. _Thank God._

"I take it you got the gist of that little talk I had with the Brass."

"Me and half the base, sir." How often humor and truth went hand in hand with them.

"Yeah," he winced, "thought so." He rubbed his forehead to ward off an approaching headache, waving her toward a chair with the other hand. She'd seen that expression after many a mission gone FUBAR. Out of the ones they'd gone on, there'd been too many of those in recent months. _Don't think about Paraguay, don't think about Paraguay, don't think about Paraguay._ The mantra would have been more effective if she didn't spend every free second of her day thinking on it anyway.

"Sir," she hazarded as she took a seat, "was that about this morning's training session?" _Of course, not about Paraguay, not anymore. ParguayParaguayParaguay._ Like a record stuck on a high-pitched note, those balmy nights whined in her head.

"That's a pretty fair guess, yeah." He pressed his thumbs up against the pressure points on either side of the bridge of his nose. It was supposed to help, Sam remembered telling him. It was beginning to look like as big a bust as that training session. "For some reason the folks upstairs have got it in their heads that you're a liability in the field." He lifted a hand to preemptively delay her protests. "Consequently, they decided to send a ringer in to test you out."

All of the sudden, this morning's disaster made a sick kind of sense. Back at the halfway point, the colonel had warned her. She'd heard it implied that there were questions about her fitness to be on the team, because she was a woman and Paraguay—_ParagauayParaguayParaguay—_had been a strike against her. It had been a strike against the entire team. One captured first and another captured trying to rescue the first. They'd violated all kinds of Rules of Engagement to satisfy their creed. No one had been lost or left behind.

She'd known there would be hell to pay in the aftermath; what she hadn't expected was for the Brass to send someone out specifically to trip her up. To hear it said explicitly that she was doubted by the very generals who'd lauded her work at Groom Lake was unthinkable… Sam was at a loss.

"I don't know what to say, sir," she said anyway.

"You are not alone in that, Captain." He scrubbed a hand across his face. "Naturally, I told them that was crap. You're obviously not a liability. You're our damned spring chicken."

If she wasn't so worried, she might have smiled since that was what he'd obviously intended. "So, what happens now?" She didn't know if she could do her job if the higher-ups were going to be thwarting her every step of way, but she'd be damned if she'd give them the satisfaction of seeing her run.

"So, now, we go on. You keep doing a damned fine job and eventually the people on your case will have to shove their antiquated ideals where the sun don't shine."

Sam did smile this time. "'Antiquated ideals,' sir?"

He gave her a deadpan stare. "You have met my wife, haven't you?"

She chuckled and leaned back in her chair more comfortably. "Well put, sir."

"I had a feeling you'd think so." He mirrored her position in his infinitely more comfortable chair and smiled. It wasn't up to its usual standard, yet it still managed to soothe her. Then again, maybe that was just him.

_Sara really is a lucky woman. _ And, in some small way, Sam knew she was, too. Because she'd met him and all the friends he'd brought along and they hadn't left her yet. That they someday might wasn't something she could think about.

~!~

When Brazil ended in bloodshed, Sam seriously began to wonder if she was the problem instead of life, the universe, everything and everyone else. Was she really so horrid at her work, so unfailing at failing that she could not effectively end the lives and the reign of people who were fucking asking for it? She couldn't even answer her own question since her mind was a little occupied with keeping her body going as it supported Kawalsky's wounded weight on their hasty stumble through the Parada de Lucas favela on the nasty side of midnight.

Had she hesitated to pull the trigger at the wrong time? Had she shown mercy when swift mercenary justice should have prevailed? Had she wondered if the arms dealers in question might be willing to come peacefully? Damn straight, she had. That was her strong suit: wondering, evaluating, and extrapolating before she acted. She did it in the quarter-seconds it took most individuals to blink and this night had been the same.

They'd had the upper hand with the coke and arms connoisseurs well in hand at one point. The next thing she knew, the colonel had crossed into her blind spot and Charlie—big Charlie, the strong one, the one who could survive this, she had to remember that—had ended up crumpled bleeding over a crate stuffed with hay and metal and spite.

She hated this job. Had she mentioned that before? She hated it yet she kept coming back. She came back because _they_ came back and mission one had bound her to them. If she was good as her name, there was no one better. If there was no one better, who'd cover them in a crisis? There'd be exactly no one for them to count on. That wasn't something she could stomach; so, she stuffed her night terrors into cut-glass boxes and put on her fatigues. The colonel gave her the signal, Kawalsky copied, Ferretti winked, and they moved out. This was her life, she couldn't leave.

And that's what she told Kawalsky in spite of the sticky creek of blood slicking her fingers around him, in spite of the heavy stink of iron beating at her nose. He'd live and live again. This wasn't his day and she balked at the idea that it should have been. _The saying lies: there is no 'good day to die' for a soldier._ She nudged his temple with hers whenever he faltered to remind them both of that.

She couldn't hear him but she knew that Lou had their six. The colonel was a mere suggestion of a silhouette in front of them but she trusted him not to get too far ahead. As if he'd sensed her doubts, a familiar hand reached back from the pervasive shade to guide her way. Kawalsky snorted faintly, then coughed noisily. So intent was she on keeping him upright—and quiet—that she didn't see the predictably rocky street buckling upwards directly ahead of them.

He went down hard and landed even harder with a well-placed elbow to her gut. She sputtered and gasped at the unforgettable sensation of rib bone starting to give. And her knee, she couldn't begin to think about that yet. Mindful of the fact they were on the run from the scene of a crime gone awry, Sam sucked down the song of agony she would have loved to sing right about now. Kawalsky wasn't a small man and hadn't had the chance to square himself away at all on the journey down. Meaning that as much as this hurt her—and she was wheezing harder by the moment—he was far worse and probably out of his mind.

The colonel swore and she thought she heard him ask someone, something, somewhere, "Can this actually get worse?" She also heard him regret it. He'd swerved and missed the mishap, they'd walked right into it. For just a lingering second, she closed her eyes, thinking, _Figures._

Quicker than any of them could pick a lock, Kawalsky and she were scooped right up off the ground and propelled back on their way. She wished it hadn't been too dangerous to take a vehicle because these streets were not a place to be at 0200 or whatever time of night it was by now. She felt like they'd been running since daybreak in spite of it being just after dessert when the shit hit the fan. _Unfamiliar territory, a distinct lack of ammo, and casualties. This is art._ As far as she was concerned, screwing up to this degree was a work of surrealist performance art. McClear was going to pin the blue ribbon right on them for it.

_If Kawalsky dies…_ If he did, things would be a bust for a hell of a lot more reasons than one. He was one of theirs, their guy, numero dos, XO, 2IC, and just all-around great friend. Compared to the things he'd survived—they'd survived—this seemed a grotesquely ordinary fashion to be taken out. Just a lucky bullet, not even a guerilla fighter in the wilds of Central Africa or Bolivia. It wasn't torture or poison, it was a moment in time and Sam was prepared to add it to the collection of those she wouldn't ever forget if she set foot on American soil again and could curl up in her bed.

Ferretti had her tucked securely at his side, still looking behind while she looked ahead, more carefully this time. She guided him around the cracked pavement and the pot holes. He tripped on loose gravel and she kept his footing. She thought it better to pay attention to the ground than to the colonel and his running, ever so soft, commentary of their progress.

"This was not in the plans, Charlie," he groused to the barely-conscious, hardly standing man. They stumbled together and would have fallen if O'Neill's steadier legs hadn't held. "Hey, hey, keep it together. We've only got two whole men left, so don't get any ideas about bringing me down to your level. We're gonna need every advantage we can get if we're gonna leave this hell hole any time soon."

To her relief, Charlie grumbled and her CO chuckled in that low, unobtrusive style he had that managed to draw her ear every time. He might have been a master of discretion but he was far too out of the ordinary for his own good and maybe hers. Everything since Paraguay had been a mess with them. He'd tried to keep things on the level and her level had been all fouled up. Good and bad, she'd been attempting to live that mission down for three months. Brazil had just turned into another indication that she wasn't living down anything at all.

She started when all of a sudden Lou sharply poked her aching side. She might have growled at him—she was that ticked at herself and everyone involved—if she hadn't immediately seen what he'd seen. Disregarding completely the surely torn ligament in her knee, she lunged with him into the cover provided by a shady store overhang to watch the show. If there'd been time, she would have yelled to warn them. Who was she kidding? Ferretti would have beaten her there as he did whenever it counted.

Kawalsky and the colonel didn't need their all-call. Kawalsky had staggered unto his own power and was backing up to give their CO ground without moving too far out of his radius. O'Neill was the stronger of them just then and those five very young-looking guys with two deadly-looking submachine guns and three baseball bats were evidently in search of somebody strong to fight. Normally, she knew he would have been happy to show a bunch of young busybodies not underestimate a man alone, but, tonight, he wasn't a man alone. He was a man with his team, his extended family on the ropes. Fighting to blood and broken bones was nobody's cup of tea tonight, least of all the colonel's.

Sam both wished he would and wished he wouldn't shoot a glance behind him. Knowing his third and fourth were not in residence would worry him, distract him from staying alive; yet, not knowing and engaging would risk his life and their safe return stateside. Her intuition was telling her to intervene, fucked leg or none. Her rational mind advised her to stay put and wait to see what else might yet develop. The latter also calculated the probability that either of these was the correct course of action.

_The odds are shit either way._

She'd already begun to move when a solid block of hand latched on her hip. She knew the touch, she still froze in place. Protective instincts talking.

Ferretti was crouched close over her shoulder and breathing hard. He may have only had eyes for the oncoming danger in the street but his grip didn't so much as waver. He was pissed and she could have felt it in the pressure of his fingertips if his panting hadn't given him away. That unique tang of adrenaline was positively oozing from his pores and his eyes dilated—she imagined because she couldn't see. She expected that she was the same. Perhaps anyone would be when it was someone they loved.

And there was absolutely no doubt that she loved him—them, both the colonel and Kawalsky. They'd insinuated themselves into her life as she'd insinuated herself into their team. It wasn't clear anymore where one life ended and another started; they worked well that way, they were unstoppable that strong on any day. She just needed that bond to keep them unstoppable tonight.

Bracing herself tellingly on Lou's knee, she rose with aching slowness so as not to alert the colonel's watch dogs. Kawalsky might have been hunched over behind him but he wasn't about to sit this one out for even a weeping wound. Neither was Sam for a swelling knee or a busted rib or two. She'd fought through worse wounds, some physical, most not. She'd injured her body, not her trigger finger.

With a snap of her fingers, more motion than sound, she signaled for Ferretti to fall back to another secure position. In the colonel's book, this was the universal sign that she was about to do something monumentally stupid. Thinking on that, she almost smiled. How could he have known that 'stupid' was her version of inspired? She'd never told him. _A girl's got to have _some_ secrets._

Like clockwork, Lou heeded her warning and melted into the gloom till she couldn't see him at all. It was enough to know he was there and she carried out her plan. Her half-empty Beretta was warm tucked into the waist of her skirt. They'd been avoiding any more shooting but had all been sure to leave with the weapons they'd brought; some were empty, others nearly full. She probably had more bullets than anyone save Kawalsky right now and he was not exactly in a condition to go full speed ahead with a frontal assault. She scowled as the gang of jumped up schoolyard bullies circled her teammates, her friends. Charlie—big Charlie, tough Charlie, the one that could survive this, she was sure—and Colonel O'Neill were back to back and she could sense that they knew they were dead to rights. To Sam, that was unacceptable.

Employing an ease for which she partly had to thank a rigorous course of team paintball shooting, Sam wielded, cocked, and aimed her sidearm. If Lou had cottoned to her scheme, he'd be raising his own at the same time. They needed to give the impression of being omnipresent. They needed to be the unseen danger and if there was anything Sam was damned good at, it was being dangerous while remaining unseen.

She aimed at the thug directly to Kawalsky left, at 9 o'clock. Compensating for the somewhat windy night, she adjusted four degrees, took a steady breath, and pulled. Four inches down from the point of aim was where it struck. He and his handy-dandy semi staggered to his right, body slamming into one of his comrades with a baseball bat before he finally fell.

Three seconds hence, another shot cracked the chill air. Sam didn't wince—she didn't anymore—she just laid in a new course at Ferretti's amen. Thug to the right of the couple, busy swinging his stainless steel bat at gun-wielding phantoms, lost a lung and consciousness. Or he might have been dead. Accuracy was never a sure thing with a handgun at a distance and she'd decided months ago that when it came to caring, her teammates were her first priority.

Lou took Guy #4 out of commission, permanently, with a handy bullet from somewhere completely new. He'd managed to come parallel to the command team's position by now. There was only one kid left and he looked terrified. If he'd been terrified enough to run for his life, he would have lived.

He'd decided to do some collateral damage instead…against guns—with a bat, no less. Sam's shot clipped his carotid on its way to lodging itself in the bark of a gnarled palm tree. It looked older than this kid. Then again, the car it had passed through on the way to the tree looked older than him, too. Once more, Sam Carter had ended some kid's life, because he was too stupid to know better. _If any of these preschoolers had had the sense to _use_ their guns, they might still be alive._ Sam had enough experience to know that their own semiautomatic pistols would have been no match for that onslaught.

Expectedly, that didn't improve her feelings on the matter, and nothing would. After these last months, she did _not_ need this shit again, but here it was. Ignoring that fresh knowledge, she limped in closer to check the scene. Ferretti was already there, strong arm wrapped around a swaying Kawalsky. He'd stayed on his feet so far because he'd had O'Neill to hold him up. If the youngsters' taunting had come to more than that, he'd have been a greater liability than a help. He carried that understanding like a head cold, but the colonel was already moving on, gathering the semis from the hands of the dead and kicking misused bats into the gutters, what there were of them.

Sam clapped a comforting hand on Charlie's shoulder. While that wasn't usually her move, it was the only thing that could have soothed her; she hoped it would do the same for him. He gave her a sluggish nod of acknowledgement and a ghost of his best devil-may-care grin. It wasn't normal, yet it was enough. She smiled a ghostly smile in return. She'd never be the same either.

It was time to make tracks, so they did.

Somebody lost a car with a bullet hole through the windshield, which was fitting since they were the ones to put it there. The colonel drove out of a need to keep busy. He hated busted operations and this one was busted beyond all repair. Sam sat shotgun and watched their six via the rearview and side mirrors. Lou played body pillow and nursemaid to Kawalsky in the back. Had they been in an upscale rental car, they'd have probably looked like a group of misplaced tourists.

Sam in her soft skirt and flats and the boys in their polos and slacks, anyone who looked would have seen dilettantes with money to burn. _Oh, look at the shanty houses. How quaint._ Sam could have barked at the absurdity of it all. It wasn't adorable and it wasn't quaint. It was disturbing that places like this still existed. She couldn't imagine being surrounded by this kind of economic depression all the time, even if parts of the Springs could give this place a run for its money—so to speak. So often she complained about her base quarters, she complained about her car, about her apartment; but she had so much for a single person. She had a home and security. She had the affection of good friends who it so happened were also her good teammates. She was lucky that her existence wasn't dining and dallying with arms dealers every night. She was lucky enough.

Taking a soft steadying breath to give her ribs a break from their previous workout, Sam let go of some of the tension that had been running her ragged these many months. She was still uneasy, she was still bruised and hurting, but she was trying to move on. _Seems like I'm doing a lot of that lately._

In spite of her chronic distress diminishing by the moment, she wasn't letting down her guard. She continued her smooth perusal of the world outside for any signs that those few marks that they'd left breathing were in sight. There wasn't a soul awake in Parada de Lucas tonight other than them. She still didn't breathe easy but she was more than content to still breathe.

"Coast clear, Captain?" the colonel asked as they took a conspicuous turn several blocks from where they'd started to stop in front of run-down shack of a block house. In all honesty, she'd seen places in the poorest corners of Rwanda built out of sterner stuff.

"Yes, sir. No tails, sir. At least none that are conspicuous." Her fingers still instinctively clinched around the confiscated semi the colonel had given her to supplement to her spent arsenal. It was warm from her touch and she was jealous of it. She'd been freezing from the inside out since they'd stumbled out of downtown Rio de Janeiro.

"Good," he answered simply and they drove on a ways. He stopped again, this time at a more well-appointed house. It was still nothing that would have passed muster in the States but it was better. He draped his forearms over the steering wheel and gave her another of his inscrutable looks, which she'd grown used to and tired of in a year or so of friendship. She was looking forward to being indifferent to them. She supposed she had Paraguay to thank for that fact that she wasn't yet.

"Sir," she inquired unnaturally softly. Contrary to really all their new, if unspoken, rules of personal engagement, she touched his arm to sway him. She felt his grimace and she felt him give, his resolve buckling only slightly under her touch. They both had Paraguay to thank for that, he was just usually the better of the two at hiding it.

"You need to help Lou get Char—Kawalsky inside. It's not much but it's home until I can devise an alternative exit strategy." Ferretti was already taking his cues and rearranging their now unconscious comrade for the best method of discreet removal from the car. It was a mean feat and Sam couldn't force herself to do more than watch.

"And you, sir?" She tightened her grasp on him, unconsciously sensing that of the gun and the man she held on to, he was the more deadly. Strangely, she wasn't shocked to consciously sense it, too.

"And, I'll be disposing of this bucket of bolts properly to cover us." He had begun to tap the dashboard in impatience. It was a sign he was ready to move. She wasn't convinced about to where exactly that was. This hadn't been a part of the original mission and yet he'd been pretty much prepared for FUBAR? _Exceedingly_ prepared for FUBAR. _Something stinks, sir. Come on, don't play me._

"Okay," she responded simply upon realizing he'd tell her exactly nothing and, making a thorough visual sweep of the area outside, she opened her door and stepped out. She carefully rounded the trunk to the side nearest the stone footpath and pulled open the backseat. Taking hold of Ferretti's shoulders, she helped him out while he supported the bulk of Kawalsky's weight. Once he was steady, she went 'round to catch their teammate's feet and lifted him free of the car. _Carrying a guy with cracked ribs. Great plan, Captain_, she berated herself.

"Straight down the hallway and to the right is a bedroom. Put him there," the colonel instructed before they could move on. "It's a defensible position and there're some first aid supplies in the bathroom. Two doors, front and back of the structure; no dependable locks. Windows in every room, so take watches to keep an eye on them. Do not put down your weapons unless you have to. This is not our final position, do you read?"

"Yes, sir," they chorused and Sam wondered why Lou seemed more content with this change in plans than she did.

"All right, carry on." If Sam's eyes were right, he was looking longingly toward the house as they carried Kawalsky inside. It wasn't much, he was right, but when they were there it was home.

She didn't even hear the gears grind when the car pulled away. She heard absolutely nothing. He was equally quiet in the presence of man and machine. She used to consider that a gift, it worried her tonight.

The two of them made quick, efficient work of undressing their superior, then employing a bit of field aid to stabilize him. A handful of the credit cards they'd been issued in conjunction with their mission aliases came in handy for sealing the nastier of his bullet wounds. A few pressure dressings, some saline washes, and a dose of morphine later, Kawalsky was actually dozing pain- and hopefully infection-free. One of the better small favors they'd been granted lately.

Sam was sitting sentry over the end of Kawalsky's bed while Ferretti did a scheduled security check of the various rooms. It'd be her turn next. Their 2IC stirred, she touched his ankle. He didn't stir again. She was somewhat comforted by the soothing effect they still had on one another. She wished someone would have it on her. _Sir, what are you up to?_

She hadn't bothered asking Lou because she knew he wouldn't answer. He didn't just take the colonel at face value, he took him whole, trusting that whatever it was he was safeguarding wasn't something they needed to know. She envied that he'd known the man long enough to believe that without reservation. She wished she had.

Not to be misunderstood, she did trust the colonel. She trusted him with her life and her secrets. She'd trusted him with her vaunted 'virtue' once and he hadn't quite abused it even though circumstances had permitted him. That had gone a long way to demolishing what walls had remained between them. In truth, it had also erected a few.

Samantha Carter and Jack O'Neill had become entirely too close entirely too fast. And the danger was how much she was enjoying that. Their closeness made it easier for him to play her. It also made it easier for her to play him. They were a couple of dueling banjos on missions like this. He was keeping something from the team and she intended to discover exactly what that was.

If he ever deigned to show his face here again.

Out of a lack of anything else to occupy herself with, she took Charlie's pulse another time, feeling his forehead for an elevated temperature and finding everything normal. Everything was normal, just normal.

She wished that were true.

Ferretti was back by the time she'd run through a mental recitation of the periodic table of elements a third time. That was her thing, science. To be honest, she still missed it. Other than blowing things up, Sam didn't often get to indulge in her love of theoretical astrophysics and engineering. Occasionally, she got the opportunity to use some experimental armaments out of Groom Lake, but that usually required the colonel to pull a couple of strings for her. This was a whole different world she'd entered here and there were moments, quiet lonely ones, in which she was utterly sorry about it.

She understood her father now, the cloying darkness that had hovered over him sometimes when she was young. It made sense to her now that she knew the type of things that his country had asked of him. He'd come back with casts and scars and wounds on top of scars. He'd be introverted or angry or short. She got it and she got, really got, how hard it was to just leave it where the mission ended. She couldn't leave it behind either. There were times when she thought that had to be the reason why she was still alone.

Sam had enough self-awareness to know that she was fairly easy on the eyes. She'd felt the looks often enough on her morning runs and on outings with Janet and Sara and other female friends she'd made over her lifetime. She was pretty but she wasn't easy to live with. They didn't understand the memories that made her avoid sleep or run herself ragged in the hope of being too exhausted to have dreams. They didn't know and she couldn't tell them. The big old _'classified'_ that topped every mission brief was telling enough. So, she kept her fears to herself and lived with them instead of people.

Most of the time, it was enough. When she remembered what she was fighting for, it was. In a place so physically far from home, it could be hard to recall. That was when she fought for her team. They counted on her and she counted on them and it was fine. Just fine, just normal.

If she couldn't count on them, though, each and every one of them, she wouldn't be able to keep doing this job. If she couldn't look into their eyes and know that their secrets were her secrets, she couldn't let them cover her six and she couldn't trust them to take point. Without this trust, this team was as good as dead today, tomorrow, or whenever it came to a head.

Because she hadn't been able to look at Jack O'Neill tonight and know what he was doing or why, she didn't trust that she'd be able to do it next time either. It was a problem that was bigger than just her.

Sam smiled thinly at Lou as he entered, then stood to begin her entry checks a little early. It was a quarter of an hour to dawn now. Maybe the new day would bring some clarity. God knew she was in need of it.

Her knee protested every step regardless of her attempt at stoicism. She kept face until exited Ferretti's line of sight. It hurt like a bitch and standing with ribs that were starting to feel a bit more broken than cracked was not what she'd had in mind for a mission when she'd put on this nice blouse and these cheap, if cute shoes. She'd expected to smile, eat, shoot, and move. The spare clothes they'd hauled to the site for a later costume change had had to be abandoned in their hasty exit. The car, too. Their plane tickets and passports. _Wow, this really did go to shit. Fantastic._

She chuckled it off, coughing at her ribs' protestations. They weren't pleased with her and the feeling was so unbearably mutual. "Shit," she hissed, slipping into the front room to lean over the back of the beat-up old sofa they'd neglected to use. It was as musty-smelling as the whole place and neither she nor Ferretti had been in a mood to kick up a generation of dust by taking it for a bed. No, but it made a good enough support beam for a breathless captain in crappy shoes. The only reason she hadn't discarded them yet because she wanted to be ready to exit stage left fast if the need arose.

No one had ever said she didn't prepare well for a crisis; she was usually just better at it when it was actually in her job description to do so.

She punched the couch with a closed fist. It had been a square three hours since her CO had driven off. The streets were clear save for the odd merchant heading out to open up shop. It wasn't reasonable or safe for him to venture out for that long to do something so simple. He'd left his team to fend for themselves. Unacceptable.

On autopilot, she completed her checks, stepping gingerly and hugging herself gently. They didn't have an ace bandage to spare and she hadn't seen any sense in making a big deal out of nothing. She hurt but she'd live. They'd all live, unless she went ballistic and smacked her CO for his secrecy. She had not signed up to be his odd girl out.

Around 0600 hours, when she was about to tell Lou she was heading out to find their wayward commander, he breezed through the front door without so much as a lingering glance at the measures they'd taken to fortify the entrance. _Still too good at getting over on us._ That didn't make her smile the way it used to.

As though sensing her glare at his back, he paused momentarily to look at her. He simply watched her, eyes drifting with haunting familiarity from her hairline, to her eyes—she shuddered—to her cheek, down her shoulder to her arms around herself, to her leg that only slightly brushed the floor. He didn't trust her personal sitrep at this moment; maybe he didn't even trust his own eyes.

This wasn't situation normal at all.

She was too busy holding on to her anger and indignation and—not, _not_—relief to give him the intel he'd likely want after so long away. He disappeared down the short hallway and Sam was left without any of the busy energy that had kept her going through the night. She hop-stepped to the couch and sat right down.

This was a mostly secure location, she could have slept by now and been rested for the coming day. The coming day had come, though, and she wasn't rested and she hadn't slept. She'd waited for him and compromised herself in who knew how crucial a way. If they got into a firefight on the way to rendezvous point, and her reflexes were even a millisecond slower than they would have been had she rested…She wouldn't be able to forgive herself because there'd be nothing forgivable about it. She wouldn't forgive him either.

They couldn't play each other anymore.

And, now, suddenly, she was angry that they ever could.

She dropped her face into her hands, grimacing at the near-audible sound of her bones creaking with the motion. It was stupid to feel this old when she was in the best shape of her life and younger than any of them. They pranced like young bucks and she was buckling like the colonel's resolve.

Out of nowhere, Sam picked up a scent. Eyes flashing in annoyance, she lowered her hands and saw that the object of her frustration had arrived and made himself at home without so much as a by your leave. She gritted her teeth to keep from saying even half of what she was thinking. Most of it was speculation and complaint; what might have been, what might be. It was insane and she'd let it get this bad. _He_'d let it get this bad.

"If you've got a problem, Carter, let's hear it." It was the first time he'd said her real name while they were here. He made it a point to use only ranks while they worked. _No need to give anything extra away_, he liked to say. She wanted to smack the smug-bastard memory of him if not the man before her.

Her temper was about to get the best of her, she could feel it. Her CO was standing at the uncovered window in his usual way, braced against the frame with an arm over his head. The streaks of sunrise seemed to shine right past him, not illuminating him in the least. He was all darkness when there should have been light.

"Did you you botch this intentionally?" It was a question a subordinate should hesitate to ask, but she didn't hesitate. Whatever had become of them on the Paraná Plateau would not survive if he'd fucked them over on this one.

"Nope," her CO replied so cool and easy his lips popped. He shifted his stance, not giving her even the decency of a glance. _It is a hell of a sight_, she mused, and she was no longer surprised to find that she wasn't looking at the horizon anyway.

"You left last night without a word. You came back without one, too." She brushed her idle hands along the folds of her skirt. "Why?"

" 'Tis not for us to wonder why, Captain," he intoned without any of the sincerity that gave that saying so much meaning to others, if little to either of them.

"If it means I can no longer trust my commanding officer, it is for me to wonder, sir."

He snorted without any ire and shook his head before resting it tiredly on his forearm. The colonel looked old for the first time since they'd met, or at least one of the first times. He'd always had a boyish enthusiasm that belied the years that hung suspended between them like a rope bridge across a gorge. She could always cross that easily enough and him in return; they could reach each other. But today, at this dawn, she didn't feel like there was enough rope and sturdy wood boards in the world to build a bridge that long.

"If you say you didn't do this intentionally, I'll believe you." She had crossed her arms to ward off the chill that came with surrendering her sweater to act as an impromptu bandage for Char…Kawalsky. He was big and tough and had survived much, she just didn't know if he could survive this. _Don't be so pessimistic_, she told herself, nonplussed to find her inner voice reminded her of him.

"Why is there any question?" Although he hadn't moved yet, she suspected that he was as certain of her location as a man with a radar screen. He could pick her out an empty stadium or a full one, she bet, with a roughly three-meter margin of error. It didn't help that he was a bit of a hero in her head. He didn't need or want that and she couldn't help it.

"Because something doesn't add up, Colonel."

He finally turned away from the fully-risen sun to lean against the wall beside the window, casting himself entirely in shadow now. "Do tell," he prompted, arms crossed and his expression a mystery.

She didn't want to tell him anything or have to confront this. If there was some other agenda at work than they'd all been briefed on, she wanted to know if it was worth it that Kawalsky could still die. "If this wasn't a coincidence, you may have killed Charlie." Sam felt him flinch from across that tiny cramped room. In his mind, those two people had briefly exchanged places and his best friend was safe while his son was not. _Now, he knows how I feel right now._ It was a low blow and she derived no satisfaction from it. It just needed to happen, it was something he needed to feel.

"He's fine," he retorted sharply. He was drilling holes right through her with those eyes and she was left to wonder if he meant to.

"Now, yes," she admitted. "But he won't be if we don't get him home to Janet. He won't be if we all get thrown in jail or summarily executed on the spot." She'd been here long enough, she'd followed their paths. She knew that people like them didn't have neat endings. If they lived and scraped long enough, they went on to do other things while this stuff festered at the edges of their lives. Someday, it'd come back to haunt them. If they didn't live long enough to collect a pension, they died like dogs. There were no neat—bloodless—endings in Special Ops.

"Not happening." He stuffed his hands in his pockets, seeming so sure. There was none of the whistling that usually accompanied a job well done. There was none of the captive glee that made him the man many underestimated. He was just a guy with a job and a secret or a ton of 'em.

"You know that how?" It was her go to cross her arms and watch speculatively.

"Because the colonel leaves nothing undone, Sam," said a voice from behind her.

Sam stood quick, forgetting her knee, and had to grab at the rickety piece of furniture to remain on her feet. Breathing deeply through it, she glared, though it wasn't meant for its recipient. She was too glad to see him upright and smiling, if grimly, to be that upset.

Charlie Kawalsky lifted his chin in acknowledgment to their chief. "Got 'em, Jack?"

Right behind her, closer than he had been, she felt the hairs on her neck stand as the colonel blew out a noisy breath and nodded. "Got 'em."

Kawalsky leaned his groggy weight on the doorway and nodded, satisfaction evident on his face. "When things go bad, Sam, it falls to the mission commander to clean up the mess. With this many injuries, he was the only expendable man. That meant he had to stow us away while he went and…tied up some loose ends."

She nodded very slowly. It was Charlie's turn to give her a comforting smile. She knew he'd have even returned the shoulder clap if he could have lifted his arms that high. This, she was content with, that he breathed and lived and lived again. It was enough, even if it wasn't.

"I'm gonna head back before Lou has a fit." He rolled his eyes but they danced in the morning light. "Damn near the youngest out of all of us and he's a damned mother hen if I've ever seen one," he grumbled as he made slow work of turning back down the dim hall. "Gotta be taking lessons from the doc."

The colonel snorted. It ruffled the short hair at the nape of her neck. Too close again. This time, she'd been wrong, but she still felt mostly right.

"We've never done this before," she whispered, not ashamed per se, but utterly outdone. She revolved grudgingly to find them nearly chest to chest. He moved too quietly for someone carrying so much of her baggage.

The colonel shrugged, his expression forgiving and not in unequal measures. She didn't care to calculate which carried the majority. "It's rarely gone this bad before."

"Right." They'd left a mess of the half-dead and definitely dead in their wake. Couldn't be categorized as good by any estimation. And, the half-dead…he'd taken care of them, because that was his job, his burden to bear and she hadn't made it any easier.

"Do we have a problem, Captain?" He caught her at her elbows when her knee tired and tried to fold. It was one of the things she hated, her body surrendering before her.

She smiled—grimaced—and denied everything. What else could she do? "Of course not, sir. I just want to make sure we're on the same page."

"That's funny," he remarked, dropping her gaze for something farther, maybe impossibly far, away. "I'd always thought we were."

She looked down at his hands, the hands that kept holding on after they should have let go. "Me, too, sir."

And maybe, she thought, that was the problem.


	3. Part II

For the first time in thirteen months, Sam didn't get up for morning laps. She languished in the sheets of a bed that wasn't hers. She stretched out from fingertips to toes and curled them around the ends of the mattress. It wasn't bare; the sheets were clean and smelt of detergent and soap and some faintly recognizable man.

Not one of her men, not one of her team, she knew, because she knew their smells. She even knew the smells of their lovers. It was somewhat disturbing though not particularly odd given that they would be pulled from their respective lives without a moment's notice and those lives included a healthy appreciation for sex. She'd never intimated to them that she knew what they'd been up to and, conversely, she'd never seen that they particularly cared. They were all adults, all virile, all accountable for themselves. If it were any other man, they'd look menacingly—threateningly—in his direction before proceeding to lose interest. As the colonel liked to say, she was a big girl.

But this man, in his eyes and all of theirs, was a mistake. Bright blue eyes that put her own to shame and light brown hair that gave him the appearance of always being fresh from the beach made him irresistible on a night like last night when she hadn't wanted to resist anything or anyone.

She'd just walked back into to Nevada after being gone for over a year. She'd been seconded to Nellis for a three-month stint at the colonel's advice. He'd opined—in his earnest, concerned, and not at all rattled way—that she could 'maybe use a little distance.' After their confrontation in Rio, she hadn't had a leg to stand on in refusing him. Thusly, she hadn't refused and had packed her bags to jump the first military transport out of town.

Unbeknownst to her, Captain Jonas 'I don't do the rank thing' Hanson had been permanently transferred a couple of months before to a Special Ops unit stationed there. There hadn't been a hell of a lot of room for advancement at Peterson as long as the colonel was kicking, so it had been the best option. For Sam, it was a step back. It took her off the fast track, where she'd been most of her career. Making captain by twenty-six was nothing compared to how fast she might have gone if she could have held it together a while longer.

She hadn't melted down completely, but she'd shaken her CO's confidence in her. Her first kill had been a kid and she'd survived. She'd slit the throat of young woman in Iraq because she'd jeopardized the mission, and the team, by screaming in fear. After that, she'd truly forgotten how to blink at her own propensity for violence. Just weeks ago, she'd put a gun to a man's head and fired, and would have done so again if the shit hadn't royally hit the fan before she could. This was who she was now, this was the kind of woman.

But tolerate mistrust or risk betrayal? No, that wasn't something she could stand. More than anything, she couldn't stand it from a man she'd come to trust more than herself. He wasn't Lou or Kawalsky, although he was that kind of friend. He wasn't Janet or Sara, though she similarly considered him her ideal, if in a different way. He'd led her to horrible places to do damned distasteful things; he'd led her to horrible places to do miraculous things. He had been a legend to her before they'd ever met and she knew why now. Yet, it was the utterly human part of him she couldn't rationalize—or, maybe a better word was forgive.

For that reason, she'd taken his thinly veiled suggestion and gotten the hell out of dodge. She could get her bearings on her old stomping grounds. She could focus on anything other than the phantom sensation of thin, scratchy bark at her back and warm, apologetic hands on her face. Jack O'Neill was a better man at a distance than he was up close. She was having a hard time living with the contradiction.

Sam rolled out of bed long after Jonas had gone. He had a briefing and had given her permission to stay as long as she liked. She'd pulled late hours in the R&D lab the night before and her supervisor had okayed her morning leave. As long as she was in around noon, she was in the clear. It was 1000 hours, the day was a' wastin' and Sam only sort of cared.

This was heaven after all.

She pulled a pair of Jonas' workout sweats from his dresser and put them on. Carefully, because there wasn't a part of her that wasn't in the process of healing. She turned his TV to CNN and waited to see what the latest crisis was that had assailed the world. During the next three months, it was someone else's job to care. Sam wouldn't be pulled out of bed to a vague as hell briefing to do a bloody as hell job in a god forsaken country that once upon a time she'd wanted to visit on vacation. There weren't many places the captain wanted to visit anymore, much less show her face.

If there wasn't a warrant for her arrest in Brazil, the local LEOs were about as useless as she'd always thought. She didn't see her name spanning the news ticker at the bottom of the screen, so she breathed easy and put the thing on mute.

The next eighty-seven days belonged to Groom Lake, but Sam's heart, which remained perpetually in her throat, would continue to be at Peterson AFB. That's where her team was and that's where she intended to return when she'd gotten her head on straight.

She thought that Colonel O'Neill had been dead-on in getting her the hell out of there. Questioning orders at the tail-end of an op gone to hell? It wasn't done. She could be forgiven for being rebellious on their first op; there'd still been ropes to learn and compulsions to master. At this late date, she had no excuse for pretending not to know the way things had to be. She always felt that her job was dirty; she often forgot that CO had the dirtiest of the four. He did the hard jobs, made the hard calls, and had the worst dreams so that they could have better ones.

Considering how little sleep Sam typically got anyway, it was a wonder that the colonel functioned. He seemed more tired some days, but he mostly did all right.

Sam realized about now that getting her out of Peterson hadn't done anything to take her mind off things. She was still fixating, still kicking around the details of Paraguay and Brazil when it no longer mattered. Ferretti had survived the first and Kawalsky the second. The means didn't have much significance compared to the ends: they'd all made it home safe.

_Charlie still has his father and Sara still has her husband. It's perfect_, she told herself in a tone that was almost totally convinced. Almost.

No matter how she contorted her thinking, she kept going back to him. Not to the majors and not to Janet and not to her father who'd thought it was it high-time he visited his little girl's unit. That occasion had been so strained she'd nearly puked on his immaculately shined shoes.

_And, oh, look, there go my thoughts derailed. _She'd waited for the colonel to say something, to say anything about her abhorrent behavior. He hadn't and the rest knew too little about the entire business to dare, though she knew they wondered and worried. General Jacob Carter, her father and the first man she'd ever called, "sir," had been no different.

_"Honey, have you considered that Ops may not be for you_," he'd asked more gently than he'd spoken to her in all the years since her mother's death. He'd seen the strain on her face and thought she was cracking up. The taste of bitter disappointment that had welled up in her throat had been hard to swallow back.

_Dad doesn't think I can hack it._ That was the absolute zenith of failure for Sam. She'd joined Special Ops for a number of reasons, one of which was to understand her father more completely. She'd wanted to know who he was and why. She knew now and understood so much more about the two of them, about how much they shared and how alike they were. Certainly, she had her mother's compassion, but she had her father's drive. She couldn't have been prouder of that combination.

She just wished that two weeks later she hadn't had to tell him that she was going TAD to her old job. He'd sounded relieved and she'd tried not to see that as an affirmation of her weakness. She was a damned fine soldier most of the time; she only wished she could have made a better daughter.

With an anguished sigh, she got up from in front of the TV and headed for the shower. Although she was still an hour and a half from her appointed check-in time, she doubted her state of mind was going to get much better than this. Damn if Nevada wasn't failing to live up to her expectations.

~!~

Following hours of pointing a soldering gun threateningly at a half-dozen circuit boards, Sam needed to get out of her mole hole. If she saw another red or black wire, she'd snap and that was not the way she wanted to end her military career. She tossed her protective goggles and gloves aside and left the laboratory for the base commissary. What she needed was a drink in the Officers' Club but she didn't dare go down that route now. The day wasn't over yet, she had to show Colonel Mailer some result before clocking out to justify his faith in her. The new submachine gun, known as the FN P-90, wasn't going to test fire itself. She felt like she'd let down enough of her superiors lately; one more was too many.

_Definitely wanting that drink now,_ she groused upon entering the mess and finding it just about full. There was little chance of her getting a corner to herself, much less a table, and she was not in the mood to wade into base politics again. She wasn't really R&D anymore, but she wasn't quite Ops either at this point. She was in limbo and she hated it. There was a place where she belonged and that was just where she couldn't be. She'd have sworn out loud if it wouldn't have made things that much worse.

Just as she was about to take her lukewarm coffee and find a janitor's closet in which to brood, a pair of sparkling blues caught her attention along with a familiarly throaty voice. Jonas had been watching her scowl for the last five minutes with the smirk to end all smirks on his face. With a tip of the head, he invited her over the Ops table with his team. Feeling sanity, or something like it, wash over her, Sam came over and took a seat. He smiled, she smiled back. It was the little things that felt like home.

She spent her fourth day back at Area 51 meeting new people and catching up with old friends. She didn't think of where she should have been again. Not until she fell once more into bed with the man of iridescent eyes and a rebellious grin did she think of the lessons she should have been learning. Then, she threw them out and wrote her own lesson plan. She liked the way things were going here.

Upon waking the next morning, she wasn't alone and she still felt fine. His fingers tangled sleepily in her hair, his stubble rubbing affectionately, if a little itchily, against her skin was soothing. It had been such a long time since anyone had shown a worthwhile interest that she'd forgotten how cherished it could make her feel.

Jonas Hanson was the master of making Samantha Carter feel wanted. She normally didn't care, but nowadays she just wanted to be wanted somewhere, anywhere. This felt like the only area of her life where she was doing anything right. And, on that note, she firmly put her team out of her head. _No need to go there, _she warned herself. _It's been a good few days._

He wasn't them, he didn't know any more about her than what got her off and her favorite style of underwear to wear (boy shorts). What he did know, nevertheless, was when to stop talking and start touching; when to leave her to her introspection and when to turn on the news. He knew stuff that mattered and she was content with that. _Besides, this isn't forever. What more do I need?_

She needed a lot more it turned out. Even in another state, she longed for the touch of familiarity. This led to a multitude of phone calls to Colorado Springs, mostly to Janet, occasionally to Kawalsky or Lou. Out of a warped sense of propriety and some anxiety, she had avoided phoning Sara. There was no telling how Sam would respond if _he_ picked up instead and wanted to talk to her. She couldn't talk to him with all of the things that were going on between them. His frustration and disappointment would make her feel worse than she had when she'd left him. She was feeling better; she wouldn't allow herself to travel backwards.

Still, a letter from Charlie O'Neill around her third week in Nevada had forced her hand. The body of the letter had been unfailingly polite as he'd been taught to be, but his post-script had been a kid-sized kick to the gut. _P.S. Mom misses you. Can you please call her back?_ The 'please' had been in all caps and underlined thrice, a touch of his father's exasperation shining through his manners. Sam had been helpless not to comply with his request and had rewarded it with a call to both of them.

Charlie was his usual exuberant self, but it was his mother who seemed different, showing reserve where outlandishness typically reigned. Sam got the feeling that there was something going on that was holding her back and nearly asked what when she heard the distinct tones of a familiar voice and hung up instead. Knowing she'd have a hell of a lot of apologizing to do when she eventually called back, Sam set out to concoct a good excuse for her behavior.

She never ended up needing one.

The next time they spoke, Sara was situation normal and they spent far too long discussing Jonas in Sam's view. She could hear the woman's sing-song 'I told you so' for days after that call concluded. _Can't a girl change her mind once in a while?_ Naturally, she could, but there was no chance of her doing it without magnificent amounts of good-natured teasing. Janet had been an audibly grinning testament to that fact, as had the friends Sam was reconnecting with on base. The sheer amount of 'aw'-ing she had to endure when talking about the man made her a little crazy. They were seeing each other, not picking out china for their new house.

Sam had no plans for anything so permanent with the man who'd knocked her down back home. _But try telling them that and they call it denial. Right._ She rolled her eyes at the thought several times a day. It wasn't like Sam's schedule was exactly brimming with free time in the first place. She'd been given some leeway to reacclimate herself to local base life, but that didn't last. She was known for her hard work, not for resting on her reputation. Sam was still as good as her name. Regardless of her increasingly satisfying personal life, Sam's days still ended late and, more often than not, with a headache. It was painful, though effective, normalcy.

Every second morning began next to Jonas. Whether it'd be a good morning would be up to their respective subconscious minds, their moods reflective of the night they'd had. A night free of nightmares for Sam would find her curled up in a ball around her pillow; he liked to tell her, smiling, that she'd wake up with a sigh. A restless sleep would end with her tangled, limb for limb, with him. There was security in numbers and Jonas was nothing if not her number two, her safety. If he was anything short of pleased to help, he'd never shown it to her. For a man who rarely seemed to close his eyes for longer than it took to blink, he was always well-rested and ready to start the day. She only knew how hard-won that impression was because they shared their nights.

Jonas' darkness was well-earned, were his reputation to be believed and she had no reason to question it. At thirty-nine, Jonas had stopped rising and had stagnated at the rank of Captain. Sam had heard it blatantly implied that he'd go no farther despite the many medals and commendations that weighed on his personnel jacket. _'He's a hothead with a lack of affinity for following orders the first time,' _she'd read on a less than legal foray into the Air Force's electronic databanks. Variations on that complaint were rife throughout the paperwork, also peppered with reluctantly penned reports on all manner of heroism perpetrated by him. What wasn't heavily redacted made for interesting reading.

He was an Instructor-level marksman, a certified sharpshooter who had been ordered to use his skills to some deadly effect often. For that reason, he avoided training cadets and fellow airmen at the range when offered the chance, saying he'd rather teach hand-to-hand—another skill he employed with lethal efficiency. For her part, Sam had learned more about what not to do in a close combat situation when rousing him from a nightmare than she'd learned in all her time in Basic. Those bruises wouldn't be fast in fading, nor the memories of his expression when he'd kicked her to the floor as though she weighed nothing. Sam was good, but he was extraordinary. One could safely say that Sam was experiencing a little hero worship when it came to Jonas Hanson; it would hardly be the first time for her.

Her occasional colleague Doctor Rodney McKay rarely missed an opportunity to comment on the improbability of their match. God, she wished he wouldn't, but wishing had rarely gotten her anywhere faster than leaving the room while he rambled. Grinning and bearing it when it came to the subjects of Jonas, Rodney, and the colonel as he ran amok at the back of her thoughts, was about all she did outside the bedroom and the lab. To her best friend, this was apparently the funniest thing she'd heard in months.

"It's not funny, Janet," Sam murmured, annoyed, into the phone beside her bed. The long-distance calling card she'd found in the pocket of her service uniform upon arriving in Nevada was coming in handy, even if the donut filling that had made it sticky refused to go away.

The doctor stifled her chuckles with obvious effort before clearing her throat and continuing on semi-stoically, "Sorry, Sam. It's just—come on, you left home and proceeded to fall for someone exactly like the men you usually surround yourself with. You don't think that's a little Freudian?"

"One," Sam unconsciously counted off on her fingers, "I don't think that's how Freud works. Two, no, I don't." She was going to sulk about this and she didn't care if that made her childish.

"Oh, honey, it's okay to be attracted to that type of guy. As long as you know what you're in for, all's well that ends well."

Sam kicked off her shoes and pulled her stocking feet onto the bed so that she could curl up against the headboard. "You think so?"

"Yeah, but like I said, you need to know who you're getting and what baggage he's bringing with him. Ops men can be hard to live with." Sometimes, it seemed to Sam that Janet forgot that Sam was an 'Ops woman,' but she was used to that.

Recalling vaguely that Janet was married to one and should know, Sam thought it best to take her at her word. "Tell me about it. I thought I was bringing heady stuff to the table, but Jonas…I don't know."

"He's got you worried, doesn't he?" asked a voice rife with experience.

"Something like that." She stretched her legs out in front her, wincing at a twinging in her knee. It still gave her grief after all these weeks. _Must be rain._ Her body had become a damned weather vane.

"Let me just say, for the record, that there's nothing that Jonas can dish out that you _have_ to put up with. You know that, don't you?"

"Of course I know that," she answered on a sigh. "If I needed to, I could take him, Janet."

The doctor's pregnant pause was the opposite of encouraging. "Okay."

"I could," she insisted.

"Okay," her friend repeated a second time in the exact same tone.

"You don't believe me."

"I don't think _you_ believe you. If you do, get thee to the nearest shrink and don't leave until you've gotten your head on straight."

"Janet! A little female solidarity would go a long way here."

"Hey, you know me. You know I love you, honey, and you know there's very little I think you're incapable of doing, but we're not talking the laws of physics here. This is physiology, biology, and basic anatomy. These are _my_ strengths and my expertise tells me that he's got you beat."

Sam bristled, "So, what are you saying?"

"I'm saying…you could have chosen worse, but it would have been hard." Her voice lacked even a glimmer of the humor that had colored her words before.

"He's a good man, Janet." She meant it more than she thought she would have.

"There are certainly worse men than him out there, yes, but they aren't the ones I'm worried about."

Scowling, she replied, "I _can_ take care of myself."

Her friend sighed, breath rattling ghostlike down the line. "I believe in you, Sam. I just don't want to see you hurt, that's all."

"Better by a stranger than by a friend," Sam observed.

"And we're back to that." Janet could be heard settling back in her desk chair, the dull clamor of the infirmary even duller in the background. "Sam, tell me what's going on. You've been gone nearly a month and a half and I still don't know why you left. The colonel isn't talking and all Kawalsky does is grumble while Ferretti grunts. And, I swear the three of them seem to stay in trouble without you. What happened?"

"I messed up and sending me here was the absolute least Colonel O'Neill could do to address the matter."

Janet clicked her tongue skeptically, "Maybe."

Sam felt her dander rise. _No, a reprimand in my personnel file wasn't an option. What of it? _"Maybe?"

"Look, don't get upset."

_Too late for that. _ "That sounds reassuring," Sam snorted disbelievingly.

"The rumor mill is vicious around here, which you already know."

"Yes," she drawled impatiently.

"They think you were having an affair with one of your teammates."

Sam couldn't even say she was surprised; she was actually sort of disappointed the gossips hadn't been more creative. "Huh. Well, that's something."

"Yeah, it's something all right." Sam could hear her tapping her pen on a case file. It was an old habit, classic Janet Frasier with Ops Team One's influence all over it.

"I'm guessing there's more to it than that?"

"Sam, Special Investigations has been all over this base recently and they've been asking a lot of questions about Ops Team One."

She knew that was a bad sign. "Just us?"

"And a few others, but I'd hazard a guess that you and your guys are the subjects of their investigation."

"Any idea why?" Sam had a couple.

"Oh, I've got at least one." They were on the same wavelength again, something that inevitably came with the territory.

Sam exhaled tiredly and checked her watch for the time. She needed to be heading back to R&D to finish up for the night; it was going to be another late one. "Janet, you know I can't tell you anything."

"I'm not asking you to. I just don't want to see you get blindsided when you come back." That introduced a concept Sam was far from ready to face.

"Come back." She shuddered. "Right."

"You are coming back, aren't you?" A dizzying combo of anxiety and fear laced Janet's voice, though, for the life of her, Sam didn't know why.

"Sure," she replied quickly. Maybe too quickly.

"Right." Had Sam not been so unsure herself, she might have been offended at Janet's incredulity.

Just like that, the best of friends had run out of things to say.

"Well, I need to get back to the lab. God knows what McKay's gotten up to while I've been gone."

"Same here, I need to update the team's medical files. Really, Sam, you've got to talk to those three. They're not getting any younger, they can't keep this up."

Sam hummed grimly. "Just try telling them that. They won't believe you." Why should the notoriously short-lived care?

"Remind you of anyone?"

With a roll of the eyes and a smile, Sam said, "Good night, Janet."

The other captain laughed at all she didn't say. "Night, Sam."

They'd probably talk about it all again tomorrow.

~!~

As good as things were for a while, that was how bad they got before Sam had her fill of Nevada.

Doctor Rodney McKay was a lot of things, most of them extremely irritating, but he was not a bad man. If she torched a very important experiment directly before a crucial deadline, he might sneer condescendingly and remark snidely on the color of her hair affecting her ability to add 2+2, but he wouldn't leave her to her failure. He called it 'networking,' because one never knew when they might need a favor in the future; she called it decency. He'd been born with his own healthy share of it despite all of his attempts to drown it in antacids and cheap coffee on a daily basis. He was a good man and by the time Sam stepped out of the Groom Lake facility for the last time, she considered him a friend.

Some sunny morning beautifully begun had found Sam lingering near the weapons-testing range to watch the sunrise. Dawn had already come, but she couldn't stave off her fascination with watching the sun's position change in the sky change with the hour. She knew it only appeared to be rising to meet them, that it was the position of the earth in orbit around the sun that was changing and not the sun itself, and yet she'd never learned to love the sight any less.

The scientist and romantic in her agreed that there was nothing like the sun, or the light of the stars, or space. When she was a girl, she'd dreamed of cruising among the astral bodies like so much cosmic dust and space junk, the universe and its infinity unfurled before her. That dream had pulled her through adolescence and her mother's death, and the Academy and the obstacles she faced as a young, markedly ingenious, woman on the rise. That dream was everything and more to a young Samantha Carter. To this day, she wasn't exactly sure what had changed.

So preoccupied was she with the saga of her life, where she'd been and where she was going, she nearly noticed too late that someone was about to rush her position via her blind side. She tossed her cooling coffee to the cracked ground and dodged while bringing up her guard. Her retreat had already erected a meter of open ground between them before she realized just who her would-be assailant was.

Rodney McKay looked sick. He'd never been robust picture of health to begin with, but this state was a new development. Despite herself, Sam risked pressing her hand to his forehead to see if he was running some kind of temperature to explain the alarming pallor of his face. She frowned when he momentarily basked in the contact before whirling away, kicking up dust with his abrupt pacing and causing a sandstorm with the motion of his arms.

Now, he looked sick and pissed. Sam was admittedly more than slightly alarmed at this point. "Rodney?" He grunted and kept up the pace. If he scowled any harder, she feared something important might crack. "What's the matter? Did something happen?"

This close from toe-to-toe with her, he stopped. He held his hands aloft for a second, then looked at them, and dropped them to his sides. He did a thing that Rodney McKay never did: he shrugged.

Sam was not amused.

"Doctor McKay, a civilian does _not_ bum rush an experienced Special Ops officer for no reason. Unless you want to see just how experienced this officer is, I suggest you come up with a damned good explanation for making me drop my coffee." She hadn't intended to make it a threat, she'd just been very attached to her coffee this morning. It had been a bad night for both her and Jonas. The morning light hadn't improved anything.

It apparently hadn't improved Rodney's impression of her either; his expression vacillated between the previous scowl and a brand new flinch. That wasn't what she'd wanted. She decided to try a different tac.

"Rodney, what's going on?"

He opened his mouth to speak; she could even hear the sole syllable of the first word he planned to say when he aborted the sentence and went quiet. She'd never noticed how blue his eyes were, too, until he had his back against the sky. It was another way in which they weren't so different.

She touched his forearm, feeling it tense at the unanticipated gesture. "If it's important, I need to know."

He opened his smug mouth and uncertain words fell out, "Define important."

Sam's smile built on her worry, though it was based on some cousin to joy. "My team, my family." _One and the same_, she thought. "This base. Oh, I don't know, the world as we know it. Pick one."

"You're lucky you didn't mention Hanson or this _might_ have been awkward." His acerbic 'wit' was out in force and Sam's tolerance for his conditional fragility was at an end.

She gave him a Look, inherited from her mother, refined by her father, and distilled into an art form by many greater men than he. Instead of quelling, he rolled his eyes.

"Spare me the 'tough broad' act." He jumped back as soon as she lifted a provisional fist. "Hey! I'm not the guy chasing around every above-average pair of ti-" He made his point, but he never got farther than that.

"Jonas," she questioned to the man whose mouth was firmly shuttered by her hand. He rocked his head in a deliberate nod once she failed to release his lips on their own recognizance. She wouldn't be making that mistake any time soon. "You have reason to believe he's being…" She didn't know what to call it. _Unfaithful_ was too much for what they were, for what little she'd admit they had. "He's seeing someone other than me?" The best she could do on a good day was all right, she supposed.

He slanted his eyes away from hers and however he was predicting she'd respond. It was nearly chivalrous how he tried not to watch it hit her. Whatever she might have said, Jonas Hanson was the first person she'd trusted herself with in a very long time. He was also the first person she'd chosen to trust after her re-assignment. She hadn't confided in her closest friends or her nearest colleagues. She hadn't gone through the proper channels or even sought counseling; she'd turned to a near-perfect stranger first of all.

She could have laughed.

_It's the 'near' that'll get you every time._

She didn't sleep as well after that, but, then again, she didn't sleep with Jonas either. (She avoided him actually, another of her many talents.) They may never have been exclusive, but she liked to think they'd at least been honest. _'Assume' makes an ass out of yadda, yadda, yadda._ If it could act as reproof, she'd already said it to herself. Or Rodney had said it, from a far, far distance and possibly with a door between them, over an intercom.

She certainly called him a friend, but she did it very quietly and not without some dread for what a future with him in it would bring. _Probably scathing insults and awkward come-ons._ He'd made no secret of his attraction to her, nor of the fact that he was aware the feeling wasn't mutual. Unlike Sam, the numbers woman, Rodney believed numbers did lie and that facts could change. He was a little delusional, a little grating, and a lot determined. But when he _wasn't_ trying take Jonas' place in her pants, he could be pretty entertaining to have around, too.

Sam liked to think of it as 'networking,' because one never knew when they would need a loyalist. She called it 'friendship,' though, because with a simple surprising act of compassion and discretion, he'd saved her from herself when there were many who wouldn't have bothered. But she'd gladly chew on barbed wire before ever saying that out loud. _The sheer amount of hot air he'd release would transform the biosphere._ And Sam was all about preserving the world for the next generation; she was as much a stickler for that as she was for tradition. Right.

Sam was as bad at lying to herself about herself as ever; she was far worse at lying to those she loved. Thus, it would naturally follow that Sara O'Neill would catch her after an especially trying day and ask an especially trying question without trying.

She thumped her head on the wall behind her. _Her husband's personality is an infectious disease. Somebody, have mercy and call the CDC._ She thought about just hanging up, but knew she couldn't do that to her friend. She'd behaved oddly enough over the last few months, hardly taking the time to catch up with Sara's life before ending their calls. She simply hadn't been able to tolerate hearing about Charlie's latest escapade with his friends or the colonel's latest fishing tale, things that had happened while she wasn't there.

"Did Janet tell you Jack and the boys went up to Minnesota? He called it 'team building,' but, if you ask me, it just sounded like typical male bonding. You know how men are; they probably just wanted to grunt, belch, and scratch without being told not to do it in front of company."

Sam grunted without irony in response. No, Janet hadn't told her the team was going out of town and certainly not why. Janet had been incommunicado for a time which Sam had just put down to a busy schedule. Things were busy for the U.S. Special Forces these days and probably busier still for their doctors. Those that made it home didn't always make it unharmed. A dozen times Janet had saved her life, Sam couldn't fault the woman for having more important things to do than ease her troubled mind; she just missed her boys—and they'd gone 'bonding' without her. _Guess they don't miss me at all._

"Hey," she heard finally, amid the thumping of her agitated heart in her ears. She wasn't fighting off any tears she'd be acknowledging.

"Yeah," she choked, instantly thirsty and, damn it, hurt.

"Oh, sweetheart," Sara started, voice dipped in sympathy; a mother's voice. "Don't you know they're just killing time waiting for you?"

"Doesn't sound like they're waiting." She hated the bitterness she hadn't quite learned to hide from this woman. It was damned hard to see how a man with secrets could live with her and stay the same. _Doesn't that explain everything?_

She had to quit asking herself things like that.

"Sam?"

She scooted down on her rumpled bed and curled around her pillow on her side. "Yeah."

"Come home." She could practically see Sara fiddling with the phone cord for want of something mundane to do with her hands. Sara liked to tinker, too.

"I don't know that I can."

"If you left Nevada tomorrow, would you be leaving something behind?"

Sam thought of Jonas and his arms around her. Then, she thought of Rodney McKay and his predilection for the blandest food he could get his hands on. She thought the laughter, hell, the exasperation she'd suffered with McKay made a far better medicine than every oddly restful night.

"You never really leave anything behind if it's worth keeping."

Sara chuckled. "You're getting wise in your old age."

Sam ducked her head in the empty room, ears aflame. "Very funny."

"I mean it, Sam. For someone so young, you've seen a lot and you've learned. You learn as you go, but that doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen by running away from the things that hurt you." Her friend paused briefly. "I know something happened, Sam, and I know it probably had something to do with my husband."

Sam's stomach churned and acid stung the back of her throat. She would have moved to sit up if her body had been in the mood to comply. "Sara, I ca-"

"I know," she assured Sam. "I know what classified means. I'm not asking and I'm certainly not expecting you to actually tell me anything. Remember, I live with a human lockbox; I'm used to not getting answers to my burning questions. I just…I don't want to lose you if I don't have to. Whatever happened, it's clear you miss those boys as much as they miss you. If you can see clear to putting this thing behind you, we can all put it behind us."

Sam worried the thread of her pillowcase till it tore free of the fabric. Then, she did it twice. She didn't know if she could, but that wasn't something she could say. "Are they really that different without me?"

"You're the elephant in the room, Sam. I pity the officer that was assigned to replace you, because he can't begin to measure up. You spoiled them rotten and they're sick about losing you." She sighed wearily. "And my husband is being his usual taciturn self. He's pretending none of it bothers him and then going into a depression anytime someone mentions your name. He says, 'Things got out of hand,' and that he waited too long to do anything about it, if that means anything to you."

Sam wanted to quip, _"Understatement of the century,"_ but the thought never went farther than her coiled gut. Even if she'd said the words, she couldn't have begun to explain; too many 'classifieds' and 'top secrets' and 'I'm so, so sorry's' from start to finish. She missed being able to really look her best friend in the eye; one day, she might yet learn to look back at herself. This wasn't that day.

"I miss him." It was the first thing she'd said without thinking in months and maybe the truest, regardless of whether she could explain how far the loneliness ran.

"Then, come home and stop missing him. Whatever he did, whatever he's done, make him apologize—_I'll_ make him apologize—and take your life back. There's so much you miss when you leave. It's hard to make up for that time."

Her sixth sense twigged. After a few logical, chronological leaps, Sam let out groan. "Don't tell me, Charlie's discovered girls."

"Not girls, just testosterone, though I have no doubt that girls are next up to bat. He's discvored his inner rebel and he and Jack are butting heads over just about everything. I try to mediate, but he's getting to that age where it isn't 'cool' to listen to his mother, so that's been an exercise in futility."

"I take it this is where I come in?"

"God knows you're welcomed to try," Sara belly-laughed. "Charlie and Lou talked to him without much success. Maybe you'll have better luck. You're old enough to listen to but you haven't been around long enough to seem completely unapproachable. I'll take it, though I'll hold you personally responsible if you're the first girl he discovers."

Sam giggled softly, shaking her head and imagining the blushing ten-year-old she knew pulling a McKay on her. It stopped being adorable after five seconds and started being vaguely mortifying.

"On second thought…"

"I thought you'd reconsider." Sara apparently came to some decision because she continued, "Look, it doesn't matter if you can get through to Charlie. It just matters that you come home. Things might not be normal, but they can be better."

Sam unfurled herself from around her squished goose feather pillow. She stretched out as far as she could without losing hold of the phone, joints popping into comfort. Sara's reassurance was her touchstone for the moment; it would probably help her sleep tonight.

"They can be better," she echoed with unvoiced agreement.

"You'll come back?" the elder woman asked and Sam could all but see her fingers crossed.

"I'll come back."

But, first, she had to see a blue-eyed man about some pajamas she'd left behind. Realizing how many that could apply to, Sam found herself grinning at the ceiling of her darkened quarters with Sara chattering in her ear. _Rodney wishes._ And, knowing the man, he probably did.

~!~

When Sam laid eyes on Jonas for the first time after weeks of Groom Lake Tag, she saw everything she'd missed upon seeing him every day and every night. He was a man of subtle shifts in mood and temper and alertness. He faded in and out, and she didn't wonder where his mind went, though she doubted anyone besides him would know. He didn't sleep much because he couldn't, and he always managed to function because he had to.

Handsome he may have been, but that was something he held together by a string called time. He'd be a walking corpse years before he stopped breathing. Inside, he was already there.

Nevertheless, he had a ready smile for her when he let her into his quarters. The place was the same as the morning she'd left it, almost eerily so. She'd go so far as to say that the mug on the TV was the very one she'd been meaning to return and wash all those evenings ago. If the dust that had settled over the surface was anything to go by, it hadn't even been moved.

Sam decided to ignore it. She hadn't come to critique his less than satisfactory housekeeping habits, she'd come to take back the pieces of her life she'd left with him—figuratively and literally. Everyone on base knew they were over; it was just time for one of them to say the words.

He'd clearly decided he wouldn't be the one.

She walked around him and picked up a few non-apparel things she'd left here. Her walkman was one. She'd dropped and broken it during a late evening run a month ago and had intended on repairing it when she had some free time. It just so happened that in her life there was no such thing as this mythical 'free time' and it hadn't gotten fixed. Shrugging, she decided to cart it home and make another go of it.

_Honestly, my odds of having a working tape player anytime soon are better if I just bite the bullet and buy a new one._ Although she was a dreamer, Sam was a practical girl at heart.

Next, she found her 'best woman on Peterson AFB's Ops Team One' mug on the bathroom sink. Her teammates had gotten it for her as sort of half-assed prank—_Clearly, the colonel's plan_—and she'd ended up loving it. She dumped out the water that had sat in it for who knew how long and rinsed and dried it before tucking it away in the duffle she'd carted along for the unenviable 'post-breakup stuff exchange.'

Turned out that, a few shirts excepted, Sam didn't have much of Jonas' in her quarters. She'd mostly visited his place and kept her own as a sanctuary for when they each needed space. She'd been infatuated, not mindless. She'd take whatever consolation she could in that.

She had to take some kind of consolation to justify having ever dated the man watching her so intently now. Not a word in all the time she'd been here. He kept his distance, he strayed closer; and, still, not one word. It made her ridiculously nervous.

Maybe not ridiculously. He had over ten years of extra service time on her and longer in the field. She had bruises still healing to illustrate what he could do to her if he so chose. Not that she expected he would. Jonas was prone to violent outbursts while unconscious or asleep; as far as Sam knew, he'd never exhibited such tendencies while awake, aside from sparring matches and field scenarios. Sam would have been a hypocrite to fault the man for his training when hers had prevented her from being mugged twice, once in Nevada and once in Colorado. Sam understood the threat of a skilled soldier; she knew better than to take the training for granted, no matter how innocent the face that wielded it.

She wasn't afraid of the Jonas Hanson she'd known, but of the one she'd never known at all. Problem was that he seemed to be the one hanging around.

"We don't have to do this, you know. We can just forget this ever happened and go from there."

Sam didn't turn her head from the book on the expanding universe theory she'd been reading recently. She'd been positive that Rodney had stolen her copy when it had gone missing suddenly. Apparently, it had just fallen underneath a pile of outdated newspapers in quarters where she only kind of lived. No wonder she'd gone so long without finding it. Since she'd already replaced it, she decided to leave Jonas to it. _Maybe he'll learn something._ She valued her money too much to bet on a loss that sure.

Moving back to the bedroom from the sitting area, Sam went straight to his closet to find her spare uniform. She laid it across the bed and proceeded to raid his dresser for the rest of her stuff.

"Sam, honey, talk to me."

She was momentarily jarred by the difference between the way her friends called her honey and the way he did. This might have been Jonas at his utmost urgent and sincere; she would never know it from the way he talked to her now. She would have liked to think she could inspire more emotion than this.

"I don't know what you want me to say."

"I want you to tell me what's going on with you, why you haven't spoken to me in three weeks, and why—out of the blue—you've decided we need to go our separate ways."

She raised an eyebrow at him via the mirror over his dresser. He continued to look completely unenlightened. "You really have no idea?"

"Nothing but what the base gossips have to say, but I want to hear it from you."

Sam put down a pair of underwear from his sock drawer that she was only half convinced belonged to her. Instead of reacting, she merely moved on to the next article of clothing she touched, which fortunately was hers. She couldn't have handled much more of the mystery intimates portion of this farce.

"You sleep around. That's a problem. You don't tell me about it and let me find out from a civilian. _That's_ a problem. Consequently, I'm forced to conclude that we've got problems, more of them than we can reasonably fix."

He reached out and grabbed her wrist as she reached for a second drawer. "You're not even trying."

She circled her arm in a medium arc to dislodge his hold. He didn't fight her. He knew the value of her training as well. Whether or not she came out the loser, he'd suffer humiliating bruises for all the world to see. Sam believed in nothing if not sending a message.

"I don't want to try anymore, Jonas." All she'd done was try since she'd arrived. "I've tried hard enough. I just want to go home." And that was as far from Nellis and Nevada as her orders would carry her.

"You know none of them meant anything right. It was just…" And, suddenly, it was as if he didn't know what to say. If she'd had her way, he never would have looked at her the way he was looking now, as if she was the only thing that was keeping him on his feet. Of all the things she'd desperately sought, she'd never been looking for that. She didn't want to be that for this man, he wasn't one of hers.

"If you hadn't kept this from me, I can honestly say that I never would have gotten upset," she remarked while rolling up a pair of sweats to place in her bag. She'd have moderated her interest in him and probably ended the romance sooner, but she wouldn't have gotten angry, or been hurt.

He tried to slide his fingers up her shoulder, to stroke the side of her neck in the way that she liked to calm her down. She rebuffed both gestures. Affection was the last thing she wanted from him anymore and she wasn't all that interested in being calmed.

"Don't touch me. We're not together anymore and it's probably going to be a _while_ before we can even consider being friends. So, just don't."

"Come on, Sam, you and I never talked about being exclusive, so there's no use in being upset about that."

"I've met brick wall with better listening skills," she mumbled to herself while rifling through his last drawers in search of her old training duds. "I just said I didn't care about the cheating or whatever you want to call it. It's the lying I can't stand."

"I never said-"

She cut him off with a wave of her hand. "You never said a lot, Jonas. That's what bothers me. You have this incredibly narrow view of what it means to be in a relationship with someone. You can't sleep next to them every other night and share your nightmares and think there isn't something significant there." She stopped to consider what she was about to say. "We may not have been in love, but we _were_ in a relationship. All I wanted from you was the truth. I never wanted to marry you, I _don't_ want to marry you. I just wanted…" She shrugged. "I wanted to feel better. For a little while, I guess I did. So, thank you for that."

He nodded and stuffed his hands into his pockets and gave her a sly sideways glance. If it was supposed to make her curious, it did. She wondered what he was up to. If it was supposed to tempt her, it failed. She'd had more than enough of men who knocked her down. It was time for her to get back up again, on her own.

Of course, Jonas had never surrendered gracefully in his life. She sure there had been a whole five minutes in which she'd found that charming. It must have been the shortest five minutes since time began—relatively speaking.

As it was, Sam ended up grinding her teeth for every moment she spent in Jonas' presence packing up the rest of her things. At first, he'd tried cajoling her in his gently flattering way. Then, he'd given her puppy eyes as though that face could be the solution to her distaste. She was convinced now that betrayal followed her everywhere out of some manifestation of supremely negative karma. _That last life must have been a bitch._

She supposed the only answer to such a betrayal would be to face it. But she wasn't in the mood to face this betrayal with this man, not right now and maybe never; not when it reverberated more deeply than she'd expected. He didn't get that satisfaction. There were other people to whom she owed second chances before him and they'd have them if they were willing to earn them. All there was left to do was see.

This captain had made reparation enough for one mistake; she was done apologizing. It was time to go home.


	4. Part III

** Author's Note: **Please, take the time to review the warnings from the prologue before reading this part. If you have already or have chosen not to do so, I hope you continue to enjoy the story. Thank you.

* * *

The first thing Sam did when she touched down in Colorado Springs was to kiss the proverbial asphalt. She'd missed the thin air and the sight of the mountains in the near distance. She'd missed ambiance, she'd missed her home. The only way she was ever leaving again for any length of time was in a box bound for Arlington. She knew that was something Colonel O'Neill would never deny her. Probably the only thing by now, but she didn't care so much about that.

After arriving at her poor, abandoned apartment, Sam decided to spend a little time showing her old Volvo some much-needed TLC. She'd left it behind as an affirmation that her trip wasn't permanent and that she would return. She had returned and the first thing she did was check the transmission fluid, test the brake line, and change the oil.

Saying a silent prayer of thanks that she'd chosen a fairly safe neighborhood and made friendly with her neighbors, she gave her fenders and hubcaps a loving a polish and slapped a coat of wax over the car's paint job. This had been her ride since high school but it ran like new. That was one of the perks that came with being damned good with her hands; she rarely wasted a dime on a repairman when she could fix something herself. And, trust, there was a lot of stuff that Samantha Carter could fix.

She could jumpstart an F-16 faster than she could eject from one. That was a quarter of what had made her so commendable in the air, as good a second seat as a first. In time, her fellow pilots had learned that she was a gift to have as a wingman. What she couldn't be present to repair, she could talk the others through. It was a skill that had made her a golden goose during the Gulf War and she'd pretty much had her pick of assignments directly after. She'd swung into Research and Development because it had the distinction of being an easy billet for her. She'd known, even fresh out of conflict, that getting into Ops wasn't going to be a walk in the park. Her father could have pulled many a string to make it happen, but she hadn't wanted her place there tainted with the stink of favoritism. If she was chosen, she'd wanted to be chosen on her own, admittedly extraordinary, merits. So, she'd submitted her transfer request and forgotten about it.

Or, she'd tried to, anyhow.

In reality, Sam had been hooked from the moment she'd begun to research the teams at Peterson. The Air Force liked to keep a close eye on their living, breathing killing machines, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise that they were well-detailed within in the system. Nevertheless, she was a little shocked at how many firewalls and security measures she'd had to bypass to find out even the most basic information about Ops Team One. They weren't an easy bunch of men to research and their files were covered in so much electronic black ink that Sam had momentarily paused to see if her desktop was malfunctioning.

It wasn't and strangely enough that fact begot the mystery she couldn't ignore. Other subtle, non-electronic inquiries had only piqued her curiosity even further. These were men—and they were only men since this was apparently too mean a business for ladies—who put near as much fear in the hearts of their peers as they put grey hairs on the heads of their superiors. But underneath both of their somewhat polar reactions, Sam discovered a strong vein of pride. They did things they could never talk about and they did them well. A couple of high-clearance medical reports she managed to finagle from friends at military hospitals in Kuwait and Germany just confirmed what she'd already begun to feel. These men were the damned best this country had to offer and, since Sam was damned good at being the best herself, she'd wanted in.

She got her wish and there'd been no looking back. All right, there'd been some looking back and some completely leaping back but no regrets. Sam was Special Ops, specifically Ops Team One; serving and damn proud to under the command of Colonel Jack O'Neill, CO, and Major Charlie Kawalsky, XO. She'd been gone for a hell of a long time in military terms and she'd had enough. It was time for their fourth to come home and for her to rejoin her boys. She just hoped they were ready to see her.

More than anything, she just hoped the colonel was ready to deal with her, because things had to change.

~!~

This was the first time they'd been alone together since she'd set foot on Peterson AFB two weeks ago. She'd been avoiding him at first, unprepared to deal with any number of objections he might have about her return. She'd come back too soon, she'd dallied—so to speak—against orders, and she hadn't yet attended the counseling sessions she'd sworn to attend. She'd done all this, not to spite him, but to take back control of herself, to take back control of her career.

Counseling wasn't going to fix what was broken without breaking a hell of a lot else. The colonel had to understand and, yet, he'd insisted. By launching her at a shrink, he'd risked the destruction of both their livelihoods. He needed such a wakeup call and she had just the bucket of ice water for the job.

She leaned against the door of his base quarters with affected ease. She'd already done the sweating, nauseous, vomiting thing. All that remained was anxiety and an empty feeling in her stomach.

He stood opposite her at the inadequate dining table the base had provided for his use. It waited like a convenient barrier he might put between them if things started to burn. She couldn't think of it as a bad call, really.

"So, Captain, what's so important that we couldn't discuss it somewhere…_other_ than my quarters?" He stuck his hands in his pockets and spoke with his shoulders. Body tense, brows furrowed, eyes cloudy. _He doesn't like the direction this is going in_.

"It's about…." She paused, reconsidering whether this conversation should ever happen, much less here. _Has to happen someday_, her conscience reasoned. Sam thought it was funny that it had finally decided to have an opinion on things. "It's Paraguay, sir."

After momentarily freezing, the colonel inclined his chin in understanding. "Ah, that."

Sam nodded, feeling her shoulders draw up protectively and firmly putting a stop to it before she morphed into a shelled turtle. "Yes, sir, '_that_.'"

She took a step away from the door to prove that some things remained constant. There was probably nowhere in the world she was safer than with him, the other members of her team, or with her very own father. That wasn't where her doubts lay, or her apprehension. It was simply—or complexly—this:

"Because I'm Samantha Carter instead of just Sam Carter, sir, you made a decision that wasn't necessarily the best one you could have made."

The colonel was nonplussed. He shook his head and looked away, rejecting the very idea outright. "Come on, Captain, you know me. You know I don't subscribe to that crap." To the sexist notion that she was weaker due to her sex? Absolutely not, but that wasn't what she cared about at the moment.

"Maybe you think you don't, sir, but just think about it." Already closer than she'd realized, she touched his hand. They both recoiled at once—for disparate causes. She didn't bother to ask why he pulled away; she could only be in one head at a time. "If they'd had Kawalsky and you knew—you _knew_, sir, what they were planning to do to him. Would you have stepped up and done it yourself or would you have shot your way out of there, consequences be damned?" _I can't even say the words, how can I expect him to know what the hell I mean?_

The colonel puckered his lips, a response clearly already on his tongue, but he stopped and bit his bottom lip. He was uneasy and that was his least favorite way to be. It was her least favorite way to see him.

"You'd have spent every bullet you had rather than…" She blinked because this wasn't Paraguay anymore and it wasn't as if she was afraid of him. Not really. "You would have killed and risked both of your lives to spare his dignity." She took a shaky breath. "You didn't do that for me."

"I didn't think…"

She lifted an eyebrow wryly, challenging him to go farther with that idea. "You didn't think it would matter?"

"Of course, I thought it would matter!" He clinched his tense shaking fingers into tense fists.  
"Anything I do in the course of an operation matters. Especially when said operation has gone haywire. I'm the commanding officer. It matters."

She nodded. "Right. It matters." _Like I have to be told, sir._

He couldn't sit down and he wouldn't pace. She knew him well enough to know he was fighting the impulse to run. She was fighting the same one. His pulse was racing in a syncopated rhythm with the vein at his temple. _It sucks to find out you aren't who you thought you were_, she reflected with some sympathy.

"I never meant…" He fumbled for his lucky hat only to find it wasn't there. He raked his fingers through his hair and Sam just wanted him to be still. As angry as she should have been, she just wanted him to understand why she couldn't move on. "You are the best possible addition to this team. After we lost Hank Boyd, I thought we'd never be operational again. Then, your file came up and I knew we'd found our fourth. I thought treating you like one of the boys was the answer to helping you fit in." He couldn't keep his fingers out of his hair. He looked like a little boy caught in a windstorm by now. _Probably feels like one_, she thought.

Sam lifted a shoulder in understanding. "You weren't wrong. You—all of you—treated me like family from the first day. You didn't handle me with kid gloves. You didn't go too easy. You covered me like anybody else, checked me like anyone else. I appreciated it then, sir. I still do." She pursed her lips, wary of what she was about to say and knowing it had to be said. "I never even realized you saw me any differently until that day. I don't think I even realized that it had gone wrong until we were home."

She remembered hugging herself on one of the gurneys of Janet's infirmary, feeling strangely different from when she'd been there only days before. There was no particular pain; it certainly wasn't the dirt. She just knew that something had changed and could never go back to that way it was. Janet had asked her about her run-in with the natives, something she'd learned about from the rest of the team, and Sam had requested a pregnancy test.

Perhaps that was the day that Janet had first seen her differently, too.

The test had come back negative then and weeks later, which had come as no surprise. The Air Force enforced strict birth control policies for its female active service members in combat units. Given that Sam was all but frontline, she never missed a contraceptive shot; couldn't afford to miss one. But it was the knowledge that she had been put in the position of having to ask that had knocked her for a loop. She hadn't really recovered yet.

"I thought they would go away…if they thought I had everything under control." He puffed out his cheeks, staring bewildered at the floor. If she hadn't been standing between him and the door, she was certain he would have bolted already.

Sam gestured for him to go on. She knew the story, knew his part in it. He'd infiltrated the guerillas drenched in mud, foliage, and war paint. He spoke better Spanish than a number of the combatants and enough Paraguayan Guaraní, the national indigenous language, to pass muster in order to get close to the prisoners. Ferretti had been hurt trying to have her back and Kawalsky was hot-footing him back to the recce site while the colonel retrieved her.

She'd had the misfortune of being captured while female and he hadn't thought anymore of it. At this late date, they both probably wished he had. She _really_ wished he had.

"You did have everything under control—me included." She couldn't be gentle, that wasn't a needle the Academy had taught her to thread.

"Yeah," he agreed, eyebrows rising in slow recognition. "It didn't—I didn't… I thought they'd leave and I could stop." The bones of his hands popped and he unfurled his fingers, staring vacantly at them as though they belonged to someone else. He turned his palms up to stare at each in turn. "I didn't stop," he confessed, though she'd been there and she remembered maybe better than him.

She swallowed back the sick thickness at her throat. It felt new. "They didn't leave," she reminded him. It didn't matter any more to him than it had to her.

He tilted his head, eyes anywhere but on hers, anywhere but on her. "They didn't leave."

"You treated me differently than you would have treated a male member of this team, Colonel." She was so petrified she was nearly at attention and it meant nothing to him. She needed it to have meaning for him.

"I did," he conceded, still refusing to look at her, still enthralled with his hands.

"That's not going to happen again," she declared unflinchingly. Unlike the rest of what she _had_ to say, this had gone without saying. He'd never put her in a position like that again, or himself. He'd die first. She already knew that, she was just struggling to be sure of it.

The colonel expressed his acquiescence without saying a word. He was pale, stiff. If he'd fallen on his face, she'd have been neither surprised to find him unconscious nor shocked to see him shattered in pieces on the rug. When the colonel did shaken, he went full throttle.

"We're a team, sir. That's how it's going to be. No more re-assing, no more dancing around it. This is what happened." She had worked her ass off for her career and for his respect. She wouldn't have those things gone this easily.

He inhaled slowly, appearing for all the world like a man on the verge. Just slowly shaking his head, he started to put more distance between them. He was rubbing his hands on his pants frantically and she didn't wonder what he thought his skin was covered in.

"I, uh,…I raped you, forced you." The hesitation wasn't his and the expression on his face she'd rather belonged to someone else, too. She didn't like the idea that she could make him break him, that anything involving her could hit him that hard. More so, she didn't like how badly she still hurt, too. "I didn't even think."

Sam began to move away herself. The words had made reality Technicolor bright. "I think it's a bit more complicated than that, sir." She wanted to exhaust the issue, to talk it within an inch of death; it was the only way she could move on.

He scoffed, "How?"

She wrapped her arms protectively around herself. "I could have fought you off."

"Don't do that to yourself, Carter," he told her warningly. "You know I had the upper hand. I _had_ the power."

"You did, but I still could have stopped you." Which was true, in any other situation, she was trained to take down someone attempting assault with a well-placed knee to groin or a quick, sharp grab and twist.

Her CO was having none of that self-delusion, which she thought funny, all things considered.

"Not and lived, Sam," he remarked, uncharacteristically addressing by her given name. _So, this is as bad as it feels. Quelle surprise._ "Those guys were waiting for you to resist." He grunted, slamming his fists on the table in frustration. He cursed them roundly, in a few languages.

"They would have killed us both had they realized you weren't one of them." The fact that he'd been wrong didn't exempt the circumstances themselves from blame. They'd been more than bad, they'd been the worst.

He rolled his shoulders, popped the vertebrae in his neck. "I should have shot them."

"Maybe." _Yes,_ she wanted to say. _Yes, yes, yes! _But that wouldn't have given either of them any peace and they needed peace more than complete truth.

"If you were just Sam Carter, I would have shot them," he admitted.

"Probably," she conceded. That was a fact she'd already come to terms with. Someday, she liked to think he would as well.

"You should tell someone."

She scoffed. "You really must be out of it, sir, if you think that has any hope of making things better."

He rubbed his fingers together absently. "It may be the only thing that can."

"Sir-" She moved toward him.

He moved as far from her as his limited living space allowed, i.e., not far. "No! You need to amend your mission report and I'll do the same." His vehemence was only matched by his intention to get as far away from her as humanly possible.

She pretended that didn't hurt.

"Why would I do that, sir, if I left those events out in the first place? You knew I hadn't included them and I know you didn't. Why change our story all these months later?"

He shifted uneasily. "Because I get it now, because I get what I did to you—and why—and somebody else should know." She found it hard to believe that he'd ever really been unaware.

"What for? Why?" She didn't mean to yell, but she just wanted to shake him. He couldn't see past his own sudden, overwhelming self-loathing to protect either of them; so, it fell to her.

"Because it was wrong!" He rounded the table to get away from her and to the nearest exist. Thankfully, she was smaller and accustomed to being fast. The door wasn't opened far enough to produce much of a bang when it slammed under her combined weight and force. She was grateful. The last things they needed were worried SFs knocking at the door. He rested his forehead against the door's surface and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. "It was wrong and I knew it was wrong."

She sighed, stopping alongside him to rest her head, too. "I know you know that, sir." She touched his shoulder. He stiffened and made to flee. She wouldn't let go and he, following an edgy moment, surrendered. "I'm not nearly as angry about what you did as why."

"You should be angry about both. You ought to be furious." He jerked out of her grasp and strode to the tiny kitchenette that he never used. She hoped his stock of alcohol was approaching empty.

"That's the price you pay to do the job, sir," she responded almost calmly. She hated the idea that she should spend even more time being angry. She couldn't waste any more time feeling like this. "That's the price _I_ paid and I'm fine with that." And it was true. She was a soldier with a dangerous job. No one had promised her safety; the only promises of dignity she'd ever garnered were from her team. If those were promises she couldn't trust…

"Well, I'm not," he shouted. "I'm not okay with it." He turned away, every muscle positively quivering with that truth. "I knew I hurt you, Sam. I _knew_, but I'd hoped you'd understand. I'd hoped you'd know that I would never…not under normal circumstances. You're a member of my team. I'd take a bullet for you and I wouldn't _flinch_." He scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, setting himself against the waist-height counter wearily.

"I know that."

"How can you trust me? How have you kept from hauling off and slugging me for so long?"

She raised her eyebrows sardonically. "Restraint, sir. Great restraint." He went on as if she hadn't spoken.

"I knew and I just wanted to pretend it wasn't…_that._ I didn't want it to be that." He grasped his head in his hands, desperate unease drawn in every crease of his face. "You're a friend, Carter. A good man doesn't do this to his friends."

With that, Sam had finally had it up to _here_. "Okay, that's enough." She raked twitchy fingers through her short blonde hair, a habit she'd taken up since returning to base two days ago.

"What?" He stared at her askance, his gaze dancing away from her each time she attempted to meet it, leaving her to wonder if he'd ever actually look at her again.

"Stop this. I didn't bring you here or tell you this to watch you tear yourself apart. I wanted you to understand what happened so that it never happens again." _A long way to go to make my point stick_, she noted.

He bit his lower lip and kicked at the floor as though it was the guilty party. Sam smirked a bit; he really was one of her boys. "It won't."

She picked up on his tone and _firmly_ placed herself in his personal space. She braced his head between her hands in order to look him directly in the eye. "Whatever you're thinking, let it go. I'm not leaving the team, and I'm not going back to Nellis. I'm _not_ pressing charges, I'm not holding this against you. We go together: you, me, Lou, and Charlie. We learn as we go." She brushed away some encroaching hair, spying clandestine strands of grey near his ears. "This doesn't go beyond these walls because we're the only ones who know—or need to know. This is over now. Do you understand?" She'd started this and she was finishing it.

He skimmed her face with his ocean-deep look, leaving neither blemish nor beauty mark unabsorbed. Sam knew she was flushing under his scrutiny and she didn't care. They lived this intimacy now, whether they wanted it or not. Boundaries they had in spades, what they needed was understanding. That was evidently what he found in her expression since he consented without exception.

She clapped a hand on his shoulder. He reciprocated hesitantly. She laid her free hand right on top of his. With him in his slouch, they were about eye to eye; it was about the first time they'd ever been. In this battlefield, like any other, she could read what he couldn't say.

Her taking one step closer to him made him want to take the same step back. But since he couldn't, he pulled her to him and she let him. He dug his fingers into the fabric of her shirt; she clung to him just as tenaciously, relaxing some as he tucked his face into the crook of her neck in unerring imitation of the way he'd always done.

"I'm sorry, Carter," the colonel whispered against her skin, the one crucial thing he hadn't already said before. He drew her even closer if that were possible.

Her shrug was hampered by arms, though she knew he felt it regardless. "It was a necessary evil, sir." _No sense in seeing it any other way now. _She didn't think it important to mention that this little exercise hadn't exactly corrected her warped sense of propriety. He still felt so much more like her partner in an illicit affair than just her commanding officer. Not that she could tell him that, or ever would. The slim positive difference, nonetheless, was that he was starting to feel like a friend again and that hadn't been true in a while. Maybe, in time, that was all she'd feel.

"Well, necessary evils have necessary consequences, Captain. I made a bad call-" They weren't going down this road again, she decided.

"You made the only call you could have, sir."

"Doesn't make it any easier."

"No, sir," she commiserated. She had mixed-up dreams enough to prove it. That didn't stop her from holding on tighter.

This had hurt them, it had definitely hurt her, but she hoped they'd be stronger now. Their team was better intact than it had ever been in pieces and she hoped that would ever be true. For now, though, the glue that bonded them felt stronger than ever.

_ One more nightmare put to rest_, she thought. Maybe now she could sleep.


	5. Part IV

Sam was sitting in General McClear's office at midnight on a Friday through no fault of her own. She'd been summoned out her of bed—she was less of a social creature than she'd ever been nowadays—to the base with the Air Force providing door to door service. She hadn't met anyone else on the way. It was like everyone had been told to clear the reservation before she returned. Her apartment was a place she visited instead of lived, but she loved the solitude it gave her in those rare times. She hadn't appreciated being ripped from there.

The general hadn't appeared in the half hour she'd been waiting and somehow that was worse. She didn't know what this was about or who. Between the clusterfuck that had been Paraguay and her total professional breakdown after Brazil, she couldn't imagine anything to come could be good.

_And let's not forget that the Brass hates me, because they really hate me, and that was before they had a valid reason._

She was worried that the colonel had broken. It had been clear that he wasn't totally onboard with putting the Paraguay…_incident_ behind them and she was a little terrified that he'd gone and told someone what had happened. No one else had known, not even Ferretti and Kawalsky. They'd sort of decided without words that it hadn't needed to be acknowledged at the time. It would have been too hard to explain and remained too hard to put into words that wouldn't damn them both.

He'd done what had to be done, had taken the path of least resistance that eventually led to them slinking away into the grimy, tree-addled night. She'd be the first to say she wished it had gone down another way, but she couldn't dispute the fact that they'd come home. It was as unshakable a truth as these last five stressful months. She herself had come and gone, come undone, and put herself back together. In her own mind, she was finally good as new.

And all that would mean exactly nothing if the colonel's guilty conscience had gotten the best of him, and eventually the best of them both.

Sam rubbed her itchy eyes in a futile attempt to substitute friction for a good night's sleep. Things might be clearer in the morning, but she'd still be exhausted if she didn't find her ass between a set of government-issue sheets and soon.

Just as she was about to call for the general's aide, the door to his office opened to admit a brigadier that was most certainly not McClear. She instinctively leapt to attention at the sight of his Class A's and his polished stars. She hazarded a guess that she could have seen her reflection in his shoes. He waited a couple of long minutes before he told to her to relax her stance and Sam saw that for what it was. He'd wanted to show her who was in charge, as if there'd been any question.

He waited even longer to wave her back to her still-warm chair and she decided on gut impulse to hate his guts. Her dad had always told her that the first thing a person ever made you feel was probably the way they'd always make you feel. The brigadier made her uneasy and she had a feeling that was not about to change.

"Captain Carter," he began, pulling a dossier from the center drawer of McClear's desk as though that was no invasion at all and something he had every right to do. Sam tried in vain not to bristle. While she and McClear had never been particularly chummy, she and her team respected him collectively for some hard calls he'd made in the past. She thought his space deserved more deference than that—not that she, a lowly captain, could say that to a one-star.

"Yes, sir," she responded with a purposefully bland expression. Of all the things she'd learned in Ops, the greatest lesson had been impassivity.

"Captain," he repeated again in the most irritating way possible, "would you say you get along well with your teammates on Ops Team One?"

At least one of Sam's eyebrows had failed to read the memo on stoicism because it climbed. _Oh, boy. _

"Sir," she prompted, confused and worriedly so.

"I ask, Captain, because you were recently seconded to Nellis, your previous post, were you not?"

Sam ignored her dry mouth and nodded. "Yes, sir." She kept her eyes on his eyes though he didn't condescend to lower his gaze from the center of her forehead.

"Was there a particular reason for that reassignment, Captain?"

Sam exhaled easily, tamping down her instinct to cringe. She was about to bullshit like she'd been born to it. "A former colleague of mine at Nellis requested my assistance on a project, sir."

The general deigned to glance at her and she could see immediately that he didn't buy it. "You couldn't have taken personal time instead, Captain?"

She tipped her head in deference to his remark while refusing to concede. "Well, sir, I considered that, but my colleague assured me that what leave I had accrued would be insufficient to assist her with the project." She began mentally cataloguing every female researcher she knew from Nellis since she was certain he was about to ask her to name the person. _Please, God, let them go with the flow. _

"So, Colonel O'Neill approved the temporary reassignment of his newest officer to another _state_ for three months?" Which Sam hadn't completed, but who was she to start splitting hairs?

She gulped, albeit very quietly. "Yes, sir."

The general laid his hands on the desk and leaned toward her almost imploringly. "Captain Carter, I may be a long time out of the field but I'm no fool."

"Of course not, sir." While she was clueless as to how this had become about the general's perceived intelligence, she was keeping her mouth shut. Seemed about the best thing she could do right now.

"My guess is that something happened between you and another member of your team. Would my guess be correct?"

Sam sat forward to stare into her superior's eyes in a wild stab at sincerity. "General, I've told you exactly what happened. I'm certain that my commanding officer will corroborate everything I've said to you." She hoped.

Sitting back, the brigadier regarded her sternly. "I would normally say that I think you're being less than truthful, Captain, but it's clear to me that you're lying to me whole cloth." He held up his hand quick, forestalling any attempt Sam would have made to defend herself. "Be that as it may, I know you're a good officer. I've read your work and, though I don't always understand it, I trust it. I've known General Carter since before the Iron Curtain came down. He's a good man and I have reason to believe he raised a smart daughter. I have reason to believe that, _whatever_ you may have gotten yourself into you can get yourself out. Am I wrong in that belief, Captain?"

Sam's gaze never wavered; she'd learned better. "Sir, I've told you the truth."

In a move startlingly similar to her colonel, the general knocked on the desk's surface. "Then, I suppose you won't have any problems with what I'm about to ask you to do."

Instantly, Sam's gut developed an entirely new level of alertness, describable only as _fuck me. _It felt like _Danger_ in a few languages, two of which Sam didn't actually speak.

"Sir?"

He didn't answer, choosing instead to open the dossier he'd brought out and turning it toward her to peruse. "Read this, sign it, and we'll talk."

Sam picked it up carefully, memories of a brick of trigger-activated C4 landing in her blind spot too vivid to be seven months old coming to the fore. It could have killed her or maimed her; either way, without intervention, it would definitely have hurt her. This paper was essentially the same.

"It's a Non-Disclosure Agreement, sir."

"…Yes." Sam heard the variety of sarcastic responses he managed to bite back due to her experience serving with a handful of men who'd probably have his job someday. It was hard to act like a general when every subordinate sounded like an idiot. _Myself included._

"Sir, I signed an NDA when I joined Ops Team One over a year ago."

"I'm aware of that, Captain. However, the circumstances are quite different now."

Sam narrowed her eyes in confusion and suspicion. "In what way, sir?"

"Well, for one, this contract pertains only to you, not to you and your team. Only you will know the details of the mission you're about to undertake because only you will undertake it."

Resolutely disregarding the goose bumps leaping up on her skin, Sam nodded. "May I ask what the mission is, sir?"

"Yes, you may—when you sign that form." He reached back into McClear's desk and pulled out a pen. Sam took it when he offered it, despite the worry settling over her.

"Sir…is it binding?" The Samantha Carter of a year and a half ago would never have bothered with that question. She would have assumed yes and acted from there. Her team had taught her to assume nothing without reason. All the reason she had was telling her yes and she badly wanted to be wrong. What good could come from a solo mission now? _Good_ being the operative, optional word.

The general pursed his lips. He seemed thoughtful as opposed to dismissive as she'd expected. Sam was bolstered, somewhat, by that. "My advice to you, Captain, would be to think carefully before refusing a mission tendered to you by the Air Force Chief of Staff."

She tried to swallow her nerves, but her mouth was a desert and she choked on them instead.

"The Air Force Chief of Staff chose me, sir?" She couldn't imagine why, she was a little afraid to.

"He approved the mission, lower-ranked officers decided that it should be you. You've impressed quite a few of your superiors. For that reason, you are being entrusted with the contents of that dossier. I would suggest you sign the Non-Disclosure Agreement and find out what you're being asked to do."

Licking her chapped lips, Sam decided to take her dignity in hand and ask a crucial question. "Is it bad, sir?"

Wary hands rubbed together, wafting the scent of cigars and leather in Sam's direction. So like her father.

"I can only say that I agree that what's being asked of you is necessary, a necessary evil if you will." And if that didn't define her life in ways big and small, Sam didn't know what did.

"Yes, sir," she replied and signed the paper.

She would probably always be sorry she had.

~!~

"Sir, I'm not sure I'll be any good to you out there," Janet confided in the colonel at mission HQ on the tarmac of Al Taqaddum Airbase in Iraq. He'd pitched his proverbial tent over the tactical map outlay and was haggling over the particulars of the upcoming mission with the team in low voices. Sam was uneasy with the lack of ready intel they had at hand; she felt a similar disquiet radiating from the stances of her teammates.

It felt hinky. None of them were fans of hinky.

The colonel passed off control of their little round table to Kawalsky and left to reassure their usually collected medical officer. Sam knew that Janet didn't go out on ops often, that she preferred to wait at headquarters and see to her role from there, but she didn't doubt that the other woman was capable. Almost as deadly as Ferretti with a gun and nothing to sneer at in hand-to-hand, Janet could hold her own in the field. It wasn't the situation or the high tension that unnerved her, more so the people she'd have to surround herself with.

Sam had gotten a hell of a shock when she'd stepped back into her old life to find her best friend playing houseguest with the O'Neills. Her husband, the husband that Sam had never seen and rarely heard mentioned, had gone a step too far on a long journey of offenses against Janet. He'd hurt her once several months ago—_which explained so much_, in her opinion—and had been saved, then, by friends in high places. He couldn't be saved by all the lofty generals in the service this time.

_Busted jaw and a shiner to put a prize fighter to shame. And, Janet hadn't looked so hot either._ The diminutive officer had made herself truly felt in that brawl, sheer will to survive compensating for her lack of brute physical strength.

Lieutenant Colonel Jim Fletcher had been Ops, one of theirs, and as much as Janet might have loved them, they were fundamentally the same type of people as her husband. As far as she was concerned, their ire just hadn't shifted in her direction yet. Sam wished she had the moral authority to tell her otherwise.

While Sam had been off licking her wounds, Janet had been packing up her life and packing in her marriage. Not once had the doctor let it bleed into their conversations, which had consisted mostly of Sam's half-confessions and vague statements about mistakes made. Her friend hadn't pushed and Sam hadn't seen a need to. Where she'd failed, Sara and the very man she'd been trying to escape had picked up the slack. She was jealous of the ease that came with that kind of friendship. She wanted that back.

Given what she'd agreed to do, she didn't see how she'd ever earn it.

Her mission had been short on specifics and high on expectation. _"There is reason to believe that Colonel O'Neill has been compromised. It's up to you to determine whether or not this is the case and contact General McClear with your findings at the earliest possible occasion."_

She hadn't known what to do with that live grenade she'd been volleyed. She couldn't hit back and she couldn't do _nothing_. She had consented, effectively agreeing to this asinine assignment. If there was anything Sam was sure of, beyond her own staggering experience and her own stifled hurt, it was that Jack O'Neill could not be broken. Not by the Iraqis and not by any of the other groups who'd managed to gouge out a pound of flesh from his lanky frame. Pock-marked and scarred, he was absolutely loyal to his country and to his men. It had taken every bit of her training not to tell the brigadier where he and his buddies could shove their professional concern.

But, what it came down to was the fact that she'd agreed to do this thing and she hadn't the slightest idea how to go about it. The colonel was unassailable during a crisis and irreverent during a lull. She was supposed to not only discern whether he had sold his soul to some extra-governmental group while simultaneously judging his mental and emotional fitness to be in command. She had trouble deciding whether to be touched at their implicit confidence or struck dumb-terrified that the folks making the big calls were dim-witted enough to think she had any business making these kinds of determinations. _Damn it, Jim, I'm an astrophysicist, not a psychotherapist._

Somehow, it seemed fitting that the very next Monday had found the team presented with a rescue mission to Iraq. Sam's bullshit-o-meter was deep in the red on this one. _The enemies of my friends are exactly who I need to watch out for._ There were few topics that tossed her CO off his game the way the subject of his imprisonment tended to. It inevitably left him shaken and withdrawn. She'd glanced the tableau of scarring left behind by his captors' handiwork; she couldn't say she'd stand up any better under that onslaught of memories.

Sam realized that, once again, her thoughts had run away with her. Lou and Kawalsky had gone back to planning their secondary exit strategy while she navel-gazed like a green Lieutenant. She carefully insinuated herself back into the debate over taking the secondary insertion team along for the rescue versus meeting up with them at the predetermined rendezvous point. If this mission had cropped up a few months back, the second team would have been the infamous 'Fletch' Fletcher's command, now it was being headed up by one Colonel Frank Cromwell. This presented an entire world of problems their colonel could have done without, something Sam and the others felt right away.

Although Sam wasn't intimately familiar with the story of how her colonel had gotten left behind all those years ago, she was well aware that Cromwell had been up to his neck in the f-up. O'Neill had made that no secret, regardless of Cromwell's obvious intent to put it behind them. He'd made every attempt to make amends, but their CO was in no mood to forgive. _I don't know if you could forgive that_, she allowed, though she felt somewhat lacking in expertise on what it was acceptable to forgive. _Talk about a train of thought for another time._

The colonel wrapped up his and the doc's impromptu pep talk with an affectionate pat on the shoulder. She looked reassured, if not exactly relieved, but she was Janet and she'd persevere. That was her calling card, one more thing she and the colonel had in common, other than a past. It would take all the perseverance they had combined to make this mission impossible into a milk run and, for all her faith in them, Sam just didn't see that wish coming true.

O'Neill clapped his hands to get everyone's attention. "Kids, campers, and," he glanced disinterestedly at Cromwell and his men, "folks, it's time for us to head out. The set-up is as follows: regular Team One, or Alpha Team, is insertion, along with auxiliary personnel, Captain Frasier for medical and Sergeant Siler for tech assist. I _know_ Carter can handle it, but this time I need her focusing on other things, like holding off potential combatants. The secondary insertion team, Bravo Team, will be led by Colonel Cromwell; their aux pers will consist of Lieutenant Simmons, our Logistics Officer. He'll be in charge of all additional equipment and will be stationed, with Bravo Team, at the rendezvous point."

Cromwell raised put up his hand to object, the colonel tried to ignore him. Sam was having an increasingly bad feeling about this. Sighing the sigh of the put upon, O'Neill gestured for the other man, who was technically his superior, to speak.

"We're not going in with you?" This set off a tennis match of unspoken communication between the former comrades that would have given the most accustomed spectator optic whiplash. At the two-minute mark, Sam had to pause to blink and re-focus.

"No," her colonel retorted uncompromisingly, "you're not going with us. We look like a tourist group as it is. We get any bigger, they natives're gonna start trying to sell us ugly Hawaiian shirts and cheap postcards in bulk. You'll head to rendezvous and _wait_." Cromwell tried to argue, the colonel cut him off, "My operation, my game plan. You don't like it, you and your Boy Scout troop can take the next hop back to Peterson. Me and my team, we came to do a job, not complain about it." Staring right through the older man, O'Neill asked, an obvious challenge, "You in or not?"

The vein at his temple throbbed in time to his pulse, maybe even faster than the muscle in his jaw twitched. "Yeah, I'm in." He laid his arms across his weapon in affected calm while giving Alpha Team a deep onceover. "You'd better get real familiar with our faces because we're going to be the ones saving your asses when this goes to hell."

Snorting, O'Neill murmured, "Oh, yeah, we're gonna stake our lives on you coming to the rescue. Nothing could _possibly_ go wrong with that contingency plan."

"Have you got a problem with me, Colonel," Cromwell cropped up, sharp and almost as combative.

"Ya think?" He rolled his eyes. Everybody knew how little tolerance Jack O'Neill had for stupid questions.

"If you want somebody else-"

"There is nobody else. Period. End of story. Q.E.D. You're here because Fletch is an asshole and he's where assholes go when they get caught _being_ assholes: Leavenworth. You're our last resort, asshole version 1.0, bit less punchy," he quipped with a _so-so_ hand gesture. "Keep it to a minimum and we can all agree to never see each other again once the mission is done and over with."

"Sounds like a plan," Cromwell affirmed resentfully, turning away and tapping his second, the ever-smirking Lieutenant Colonel Harry Maybourne, to convene his hand of troops. Maybourne skulked, and there was no other word for it, right off to find their MIA team members. Sam hadn't trusted him from the moment Cromwell had introduced him to the team. His younger teammates, Captains John Sheppard and Evan Lorne, seemed to agree if their endless efforts to avoid his presence were anything to go by.

Sam sneered at his retreating back and shook her head. She'd dodged a bullet when getting picked for Peterson's Ops Team One. Shriever, Cromwell's primary post, had gotten second pick of applicants and it looked like the pits to her, not that she was biased or anything.

"Carter," her colonel summoned, "a word, please." He waved her over to a deserted corner of the tent where he met her in his standard closed-off, pissed-off, and squared-away position. _I'm about to get the brunt of his bad mood. Best mission ever._

"Sir, is everything all right?" She waited at parade rest, old school.

He seemed to relax at her more casual, familiar stance. Giving himself a shake, he flicked an eyebrow at her. "Shouldn't I be asking you that?"

Sam felt her eyes widen beyond her ability to stop them. She'd always had a Cabbage Patch face, it was pretty much her tell. "I don't know what you mean, Colonel."

He lowered his voice as he leaned a bit closer. She cut off her impulse to recoil at the knees. "Sam, if you don't want to do this, say so. I need to know that I can come up behind you without you freezing up. This is gonna be a close and dirty op. I need you at-"

"-one hundred percent, sir? I'm already there," she promised him. "I'm ready when you are to bring our guys home." Three Ops officers out of Peterson and a State Department security analyst way out of bounds for the embassy in Baghdad? Easy as pie—if the pie required a nuclear-powered toaster oven to bake it. But impossible was in their mission statement, she was game.

He met her eyes steadfastly, letting his remorse and pride and gratitude show. She tried to mirror what he gave her and give it to him in return. It wasn't only her faith in him that had been shaken, but his in himself and his command ability. They couldn't have that.

"Good. Saddle up, Captain. We head for the drop in twenty." She leaned into it when he closed her fingers around her arm. He'd have her if she stumbled, she still knew that.

"I'll make it fifteen."

"That's what I liked to hear. Give Doc a hand with her pack. I think she could use a friend."

"Sir, yes, sir." She definitely saw a bit of that old twinkle in his eyes. She'd missed that.

He slid his hand up to clap her on the shoulder. "Good ma—ah, good." He grumbled in his usual curmudgeonly fashion, "One of these days, I'm gonna get that right the first time." He rubbed at his neck as she hid her smile.

"Sure, you are, sir," she answered dubiously. "I'll help Janet get ready. You do what you have to do."

"Don't I always?" And she couldn't pretend that the question was about anything else.

She acquiesced one more time. "Yes, sir, you always do."

"Eighteen minutes, Carter," he declared upon letting go.

"Thirteen, sir," she guaranteed. A girl had to have some secrets, true, but sometimes it was nice to be predictable.

~!~

The secondary team was dropped four kliks outside of Fallujah and their orders would take them roughly two-thirds of the remaining 65 kliks east to Baghdad, where Sam and her team would be undertaking their perilous rescue mission. They'd split up at the recce site just in case they had tails, and because, as the colonel had so eloquently implied, a big group of non-natives would stand out.

Adversaries or not, the team leaders still favored each other with textbook salutes before parting ways. This old battleground was theirs, but it didn't have to be the site of a new tragedy.

Bravo Team would settle into their desert digs, grateful that the night made some difference in the heat that would have fried them during the day. It was cooler now, as evidenced by all their thick BDUs and close skullcaps. It'd be several hours, and maybe days, of huddle and observe.

Sam envied their ability to lay in wait despite knowing that the excitement was exactly where she was headed. The goose bumps and butterflies couldn't have been tamed for all the butterfly nets and hot toddies in the hemisphere. Even when she hated what she did, she lived for times like this.

_Definitely could have been worse,_ she thought, and remembered why she'd fought so hard to keep this livelihood. This team, this family, she owed them everything she'd become. Some days she didn't like that person, others she couldn't imagine being anyone else. This was one of the latter, she realized as she stared over the vista afforded by the quiet chopper, a modified RAH-66_ Comanche_ prototype, as it transported them to the far outskirts of Baghdad. They would be approaching from due south in order to give the Bravo Team the greatest possible chance to reach the rendezvous point without disturbance. If Alpha was detained, it'd be in the hands of the second team to either save their asses or complete the mission in their stead.

Sam had to admit she wouldn't mind them doing a bit of both. _It's a rush, but damn is it dangerous._ Radio silence was in effect and the only light came from the stars, underscored by an absentee moon, which shone so close she might have been able to touch them if she just reached out far enough. This was the kind of night about which great stories were written.

She adjusted her beanie to fully cover her blonde locks in the dark of the cabin while her gaze hardly strayed from the sky, another place she still missed. Patting down the cap, she ensured that none of the gold stuff would show. Her hair still made her uneasy on ops, never having stopped feeling like a bright, honkin' blip on the enemy's radar screen. Silly maybe, but letting it show had hardly ever brought her luck; she wasn't expecting even this enchanting night to be a change of pace.

With pace in mind, Sam turned to check on Janet to find her hunkered down in the back of the chopper, doggedly analyzing her med kit with the grip of her MP-5 clutched in her non-dominant hand like a talisman of saints. She didn't have to be reciting a prayer out loud for Sam to know to see her friend was a little nervous; it didn't hurt though that she mouthed it instead.

She would have offered the anxious doctor some measure of reassurance had Kawalsky not gotten there first. It was a light touch on her wrist, coincidentally above where her pulse could be seen pounding out a frantic beat against her long cotton sleeve. Janet's gasp was small and contained, nonexistent to someone who didn't know. But they knew and they understood and she had a moment, Sam realized, to find her center and compose herself. It came with the territory and every one of them lived it.

If Fletcher ever set foot near Peterson AFB again, Sam knew it best that she didn't run across him and that he didn't run across one of her boys. They might cringe at needles and redden at the barest passing mention of a prostate or pelvic exam; nonetheless, they loved their doctor. She was one of theirs, too, after a fashion, one they'd go to bat for. _And wouldn't flinch_, Sam recalled with a suddenly painful clarity.

Knowing that was what they were supposed to be to each other, she didn't know how she could justify doing something to hurt a member of her team, even under protest. _Because it's the only thing to do_, her upright, rule-abiding conscience supplied. Orders were orders and she was so sick of being backed into corners, she could scream. She knew what her CO was all about, but whatever beef the Brass had with him ran as deep as his antipathy for Cromwell, if not deeper. Logic didn't matter, only the objective.

As she saw him stare expressionlessly at the very shadow-ridden skyline that enthralled her and had once confined him, she worried that someone had fully engineered the perfect mission to bring Jack O'Neill down.

And she couldn't say a word.

~!~

Sam thought the funniest thing about instincts was their awful timing. Never let it be said that a foreboding feeling in the afternoon didn't come to fruition four days later at breakfast, because she could vouch for that with her own experiences. She'd known things were about to go wrong since the Friday before the Monday when they'd gotten this mission from Hell. She'd expected that feeling to be in relation to her own crappy solo gig, but, if that wasn't enough, someone upstairs had decided to pitch a whole rig of crude oil onto the slope of an already uphill climb.

All things considered, Colonel O'Neill handled their initial maneuvers with more grace than he'd ever claim for his own. They got off at the Alpha drop zone and took their leave with a wordless thumbs-up from the pilot. The city itself was a silent titan over their heads, a stunning picture of darkened domes, spires, and distant empty streets. Not their destination, so they didn't dawdle.

Sam didn't miss the apprehension that, for a moment, made her teammates' eyes as unfathomable as the night they claimed to adore on American soil. Lou and Charlie only had eyes for the ground ahead and the man whose steps seemed devour it. He didn't seem to realize he was leaving them behind him, she knew he would have slowed down if he had.

They played a mighty game of catch-up and caught up, all hands in tow. Charlie moved to the point position while Lou took six, letting Sam, Janet, and Siler fall into flank with the colonel. The only sign that he noticed came when he decreased speed, even stopping altogether just to breathe. A shudder went through him that was all muscle twitches and tics and too much at the same time. Knowing there was nothing they could say, they closed ranks around him and pushed on. Somebody's life was depending on this mission and, now that they were here, so did theirs.

They traveled at a brisk pace for two hours until it was just after 0300, the 'witching hour' or, as Sam would ever see it now, the hinky hour. They covered the distance around the perimeter of the city in what some might call record time. It wasn't fast enough for their CO. Without tiring, he was constantly increasing his foot speed, the urgency of _should've been there yesterday_ written all over his face. Upon realizing that the colonel was psychologically incommunicado, Sam alerted Lou who signaled Kawalsky with a low whistle.

"Colonel," his 2IC started carefully, "we should probably think about stowing the doc and Siler some place safe. We don't want them too beat to move when we get the hostages." They'd talked about it earlier, but there were definitely things they hadn't considered. Like Janet's stature and the sheer amount of tech Siler was going to have to handle for contingencies. "Sir," he tried again, this time louder. "Jack."

The man didn't say a word, didn't slow down. The single-minded resolve to get his people out had overwhelmed his training. Sam clutched her weapon a little tighter. Jack O'Neill was not a man she'd ever want to try to detain by hand. His 2IC had no such fear. That was the only reason it was so effortless for Charlie to drop back and bring him down.

Even partly controlled, the landing that resulted kicked up a cloud of dust and Lou stepped up while Sam pulled their auxiliary personnel back a distance. It wouldn't due to make any idle watchers curious. Not for the first time, she missed the beige desert fatigues that would have made it that much easier for them to blend in with the barren landscape.

She kept her unassigned charges crouched low, Siler less in need of her instruction than Janet, who was also faring better than anticipated. Sam's eyes roved the plain as her temporary team members watched the quiet, intense intervention happening on the cracked ground. All she caught were snatches of, "You're okay," and "It's almost over," in voices she'd trust with her own sanity, had trusted with her own life.

His, "Okay, I'm okay," hurt low like a bad fall. He wasn't okay and that was all she'd wanted him to be in front of her. His old friends pulled him to his feet and dusted him off. He didn't hesitate to lean into them and they took his weight. _That's what we do,_ she informed herself with a lighter heart. He wasn't okay, but he could be.

They could survive this.

When they returned his weapon, he carried it in a firm, kind grip. He was all there, naturally dark eyes alert and reflecting what little light there was instead of swallowing it up to go who knew where. _It's a Hell only he can beat._ Wasn't every personal Hell that way?

She pointed silently to her eyes and held up a fist to indicate no visual on hostiles.

He slanted his head at her in acknowledgment and maybe, she thought, a little thanks that she hadn't scrapped the mission for a moment to see to him. _If he really knew my orders, he'd wish I had._

He didn't have to know that she'd wanted to. That wasn't the kind of Ops officer he'd trained her to be. He didn't have to know that she hadn't been this way when she'd met him and that it wasn't only in good ways that he'd changed her. He didn't have to know anything.

She was good enough.


	6. Part V

This wasn't what a mission should feel like. On their worst days, Sam at the very least felt like she knew where she was going and why. She didn't feel that way this time. The intel was sparse—they hadn't been given coordinates, rather extrapolated them from what information they had already gathered from more trustworthy sources—the game plan was fairly slipshod and their operation was man-heavy.

Special Operations Team One out of Peterson AFB did not operate this way. Sam couldn't dispute that she was pretty pissed at being forced to do so. Lou, covering their west flank while Sam brought up their six, flashed her a quick smile in what could only be an attempt at comfort. She returned it, shaking her head and furrowing her brow in incredulity at no specific thing. The whole damned situation was nuts, he had to know that as well as Sam.

He tossed up his palms, one with gun in hand, conceding the same. Sam realized that she wasn't the only one who didn't like the look of things.

_Oh, this is not good._ Whenever more than one of their instincts started pinging at once, things were uncommonly dangerous. They couldn't afford 'uncommonly.'

Suddenly, Sam felt more than heard a hush come over the already quiet band. Past Siler's shoulder, she spied two separate fists go up as their owners went down. She followed suit with an energetic lunge, snagging the bulk of Janet's pack and dragging her to the dirt with her. Siler had beat them to their knees. Lou was poised to her left with his gun braced on his bent knee and his eye to the scope. There wasn't the slightest glint from the reflective glass and, yet, she knew that the colonel was doing the same up ahead.

_Desert camo would be a damned godsend right now. _They were walking ink blots out here.

She kept her ears open and her eyes on the colonel and major's respective fists. Without thinking, they were mimicking each others' hand signals. Evidently noticing the synchrony, she caught her CO risking a characteristically closed-mouth half-smile. _Can't show teeth, might reflect light._ Another aspect of the man that only made sense _in situ_.

He'd sighted possible hostiles north to northwest, numbering upwards of three. Kawalsky echoed his observation, mutely adding his equal number from northeast. Lou tapped his shoulder and held up four fingers for west. Janet, who'd pivoted in Sam's direction on the drop, peered over her shoulder and mouthed with devastating clarity, "Shit. Five," on the south front. Sam didn't need to get Siler's report to know they were screwed.

"Ditto here, sir."

_Now, it's empirical. We are royally fucked. _There were times that she seriously hated the numbers game. _I am going to have someone's _ass_ for this._ She swore it then and there, and Sam could be damned strident about her oaths. But her first and primary concern was not dying in the desert, where no one could hear her scream or curse every bastard with a star on their shoulders, her father and Uncle George excepted. Or not, because she doubted she'd even be here if not for their early influence. _No Father's Day card for either of them next year._

Probably.

She was a soft touch when it came to her father figures. Still, they were getting such a talking-to about their lackluster peers. She was actively telegraphing her part in the dialogue as the team fell into combat formation.

Their CO was back in action, faculties in check and crosshairs tight. He would have been giving them the nonverbal equivalent of '_Don't fire until you can see the whites of their eyes'_ if he thought such a sentiment was anything short of damned idiotic. His motto: 'Shoot them over there, we don't need 'em over here!' did perfect justice to the man himself. He was practical, some would even say simple, but, either way, he wanted no more artifice than it took to get the job done. And this was one job that needed to be done right. There would be no retreating; there was nowhere to retreat to.

"Anybody else think playing 'possum might work?" he inquired sarcastically, in the process of pulling back toward their center. "No? Just me, then. Damn."

Janet hefted her gun up against her bracing shoulder. "Should have worn the desert field dress," she murmured, a bit too loudly and unhelpfully in the colonel's opinion. Sam winced preemptively on her behalf, though she agreed.

"Thank you for that positively insightful and _useful_ comment, Captain Frasier. The next time we need someone to state the obvious, I'll make sure we leave an open spot on the floor for you." His glare would have likely been withering if he'd been able to aim it the right way. As it was, Sam predicted that he had his hands and glare full with some very fast approaching potential—nay, probable—combatants.

"Sorry, sir," Janet squeaked. Sam thought she remained a bit more fearful of the devil she knew than the likely ones she hadn't met yet.

The colonel's annoyance came through in a wordless sigh, carrying a fine trace of guilt along for the ride. "Of course you are."

The opposing forces were definitely coming, but their approach seemed scattered as opposed to pinpointed. That gave them a few extra minutes. There would probably be no getting away, which didn't mean they wouldn't give a good old college try; however, there was time to prepare.

"Kawalsky, I want you covering Frasier and Siler. If you get a chance to run, take it. Cromwell's people are gonna need tech and med assistance on their in and out. Ferretti, I want you covering Carter and vice versa. Carter, Doc, you both need to look a lot less feminine right now."

"Sir?" their responses came simultaneously.

"I don't think I need to explain what's going to happen in there. They give _no_ quarter to men, what do you expect they'll do with the two of you?" The question was asked without malice and without expectation of a response since nothing really needed to be said.

Sam reached for Janet and started tucking the hints of her short bob under her cap. That wouldn't go far in offsetting the utterly feminine nature of her features, but it might make them hesitate. Janet had gathered a bit of dust, dirt, and sand to smear across their war painted selves in the hopes of better hiding their smooth skin. They had long since agreed that men seemed to have an unspoken understanding that women just had nicer skin, which was exactly what they didn't want their prospective captors to notice.

Sam's own close-cropped hair worked in her favor this time, even if her overlarge blue eyes did not. Janet's damned near Bambi-esque eyes weren't much of an advantage either. Their respective figures went without saying as difficult things to downplay, but for the moment they had tac vests and jackets to hide behind. It was as good as it was going to get.

_Someone's ass!_ _ And it better be delivered on a silver platter._ She'd be railing like that in her head for a while yet.

The colonel resorted to hand motions to pass their play. Kawalsky set off with Siler and Janet, subtle at first, then faster in a direction 56 degrees off their chosen route. There was going to be a firefight, no question. They could doubtlessly take their detractors, but it wasn't going to be a discreet win. Winning meant storming the castle, losing meant being dragged to it. _I do not do strapped down and tortured well. _And, wow, she was never allowing that visual to enter her mind ever again.

As soon as Sam had managed to shake off the panic that came from imagining torture, the first shot from the other side clipped her vest, knocking her off her feet and to the much less serviceable on-her-ass position. The colonel cursed and took out whoever got her from an impressive 250-plus-meter distance. Given the scowl on his face, she did not envy those on the other side of his bullets. _He's a Master Instructor-level marksman. How did I forget that?_

She glanced at the scattering of incoming bogeys from his vantage and figured they wouldn't be forgetting it anytime soon either. _Nice._

After she climbed to her feet, Sam proceeded with some very quick takedowns on each of their flanks and a few on Charlie and company's tail. _This has got to be the most bugfuck attack I've seen yet._ Their op hadn't been all that well put together and they were still managing to trounce their takers, really trounce them. Sam swallowed her chuckle at Janet taking out two in an eleven-second pause. Siler patted her on the back, then popped another one at her four o'clock, leading Sam to wonder just how much training was required to be auxiliary personnel for Special Ops. _With the colonel in charge, I'm thinking a hell of a lot._ Lucky for them.

"Head in the game, Sam," Lou hissed, rounding her to take up the hindmost position. "Head in the game!"

_This thinking too much thing is getting to be a problem._ Taking down five incredibly, improbably, well-aligned foot soldiers approaching at 120 meters, Sam decided that it bore further thinking about. Later, because she was a little busy right now. She politely removed their gun-toting cohorts from the realm of this mortal coil and also put that in the pen of subjects she'd have philosophize about before she could go on with her life. It was a big pen and she'd have a short life; there was a chance she'd get around to it before the end, but no promises.

Sam inhabited ground just due north of Truly Jaded and slightly southwest of Take Her Gun. The neighborhood was far from hallowed ground but the neighbors were dependable. They were either completely nuts or they had found some way to anchor themselves to what society—and the Air Force—considered good conduct and behavior. She had anchored herself to the proverbial white picket fence. It was structurally sound for all its emotional undercurrents.

Yeah, Sam could do with a lot fewer of those.

Amid the firefight, Kawalsky and his two had actually managed to disappear. The superior oncoming force had never come. They'd gotten a Little League resistance at the World Series and they were left sitting on their asses in an Iraqi corpse garden. _This was way too easy_, she thought, turning sharply from side to side to see what catch luck still had to offer.

There was nothing readily apparent. Sure, they'd made a hell of a ruckus out here near the bad guys' high security prison and, yet, no Second Coming. Hell should have rained down on them and never stopped, but there wasn't a grain of sand out place.

Sam tasted bile in her throat. It also could have been the flavor of a fix; she'd always heard getting burned left a bad taste in your mouth. Someone wanted them to go on, someone who knew that most of the team would object if they faced _no_ resistance as opposed to weak resistance. Whoever they were, she hated the hell out of them for being right.

She, the colonel, and Ferretti stayed bent in half to spy across any dips in the plain for places where the other side's guys might be lying low. It was certainly _a_ plan. Unbeknownst to the elder two, their most subordinate teammate was fighting hard against the urge to tell all and turn tail. Bad juju, bad aura, bad whatever was all over this mission and she didn't want it tainting the best things in her life: her job and her guys. They didn't need to be screwed because she didn't have the good sense not to agree to a mission sight unseen.

And she was usually so logical.

The colonel signaled for them to proceed, though she noticed that he cut their speed by at least a third. This looked twice as bad as it felt and they were about to have to pass their downed opposition on the way in. It was the perfect opportunity for a surprise ambush. So, naturally, there was no ambush.

They passed fourteen cooling forms to the north as they approached the prison's perimeter. The colonel wasn't even pretending this was going to go well anymore. Retreat would definitely fail. They were in No Man's Land here and Charlie, Janet, and Siler had been the last lucky ones to escape. Any attempt to radio either the secondary team or HQ would likely do more to expose their position than glean useful intel. It was do or die here. So, they did. As for whether they'd die, the jury was still out.

Rather than lead them through the front entrance and directly into the belly of the beast, the colonel guided them around the side of the solidly constructed citadel. There was nary a guard in sight and that was far more alarming than any loaded weapon aimed at the center of her forehead.

They followed the path of the prison sewage trench, which was pretty nasty but also understandably deserted. Her CO would rather suffer discomfort with the knowledge that it might save their lives than be slightly better off and get a knife between the shoulder blades. _I think his complex about knives is as big as mine._ She thought it was probably bigger, though, if it was the memories associated with his stay in Club Med that were guiding to him.

But, this time, he utilized Sam's method of cut-class storage boxes and put those demons away. Even if he'd worn his personal angels and devils on his shoulders for anyone to see and adopted them as pets, she and Lou still would have followed him to hell. Been there, done that. It was easy to follow him anywhere when they knew he'd never leave them.

They roved constantly without noting a sound, neither gust of wind nor human expletive corrupted the air, which was saying something. The colonel tripped over something in their path and hissed; she'd heard the abrupt pop of his ankle as it twisted to one side and his staggering stealthily in pain. The stars were offering less light now and they knew better to resort to their torches at this point. Sam's next thought had _her_ nearly staggering at her lateness and told her how clearly the lot of them had been off their game. With a low, cricket-like whistle, she called their progress to a halt. Lou and the colonel heeded her unquestioningly and mimicked her action in donning the night vision goggles Simmons had packed for them. Ferretti shot her something akin to playful wink of thanks and her CO gave her shoulder a thump as he limped past her.

This mission had surpassed hinky back at Al Taqaddum. It was currently working toward suicidal. _I love my job, I love my friends. I love my country, I love my countrymen._ Every one of those things was true and this still smacked of desperate futility. The fix was in, they had no friends here. Luck and training would have to be their beacon from here on out.

It would also have to be the colonel's crutch and nursemaid since there wasn't exactly a first aid station nearby where he could rest his soon to be ballooning ankle. She sent an empathetic wince in the direction of his last location prior to carefully continuing forward, feeling for his presence as she went. The worn-in scent of Lou Ferretti, focused and winded, wafted past her. He was shifting the line-up. Lou had just taken point, leaving the colonel the center position and Sam six. _It'll keep him being immediately apparent as the weak link_, she hoped.

The noxious smell, which had let up for a short time during their prowl, started up anew as they approached a short rise of rickety stairs leading to a door on the prison's rear wall. Except this smell was worse; this wasn't solely a matter of human waste, this was human _waste_. People locked in small rooms and left to languish until something ended their life or they wished something had. She'd been to enough POW camps to recognize the smell, the reek of the dying left to mingle amid the sour of the living. Pretty soon it all descended into a stomach-churning stench for the ages. She took it as a warning: _This could be you, don't let this be you._ It was advice she would have happily taken had circumstances permitted.

Feeling a shudder of revulsion undulate up and down her spine with this latest ruined breath, Sam only carried on by sheer force of will. She had her pride and her ego, but she didn't want this to end the way someone else did. They wanted Jack O'Neill to fail in the only battlefield where it was likely and that was where she'd brought him.

Despite not occupying the forward position, the colonel didn't hesitate to stop them to the side of the door with a fist in the air. The signals ran fast: Ferretti would throw open the door, Sam would throw a flashbang, and the colonel would cover the entrance after its detonation. _What of subtlety_, she thought, but the art of war had been Alpha Team's first fatality tonight. Not a good night.

Their entrance went down without a hitch and without a stitch of resistance. Continuing to sport their goggles, they descended into the heart of the building down a steep staircase. Fluttering a shoulder against the nearest wall told her she was encountering a new door every few steps. The Iraqis didn't spare a square foot of storage space. _They're also not too concerned about wasting money on plumbing. Nothing is exactly clean here._ But, then, that was hardly the goal of a prison in the first place.

Their intel had placed their prisoners a third of the way down the main staircase, which wound throughout the building in a confusing labyrinth of ups, downs and horizontals to lead to the holes charitably called holding cells. Well, some were here and a few were elsewhere. For a quicker extraction, they'd probably have to split up.

Sam listened hard for any discernible enemy movement from the top or the bottom of the stairs. The stun grenade fumes had already cleared, though her view of the site was still somewhat foggy through her goggles. At roughly the indicated point, Sam clicked her tongue three times to catch the guys' attention. Ferretti copied and took up the position opposite her on the other side of the indicated door. The colonel kept his gun up, easing in to check the door for booby traps; trip wires, detonators, and heat sensors. If he was unfortunate enough to run across one, he wouldn't stand a chance, but Sam and Lou might still have a shot at getting the hell out of dodge.

_Don't find anything, don't find anything_, she chanted with chaotic frequency_._ She didn't think abandoning him here was something she could withstand on top of the year she'd had. And telling Sara…Sam felt herself turn grey then green at the thought. Sara had always been the stalwart at home; for this, she shouldn't need to be.

When Colonel O'Neill turned his head left and right to make eye contact with them, as much as was possible through their goggles, Sam realized he must not have picked up on any detectable danger and hoped this was the luck she'd been praying for. She moved in beside him and dropped down to pick the lock without needing to be given the order. Thanks in large part to her big brother, Mark, she was damn good with a slim jim on the sly and under time constraints. Oh, the trouble he'd pulled her into just to get back at their dad.

_Now, I guess the joke's on him. I turned out like Dad anyway._ At home, she would have paused to think about all the implications of that as she had a few hundred times in the past. She wouldn't do that here; she'd done enough thinking and not acting for a few old soldiers' lifetimes in Baghdad. _Flight maneuvers have nothing on ground ops._ She would always love her wings but she'd never see dogfights the same way again.

The lock finally turned over with a sluggish, rusted click. Giving her team a thumbs-up, Sam dropped back to resume her former stance. The colonel nodded his thanks and crouched as low as an equally rusty knee and a twisted—and probably sprained—ankle would allow. One more unspoken, _"Eyes and ears front,"_ and he was shoving the heavy door inward and re-taking the lead, MP-5 poised and safety off. They glided in behind him, filling the exit and providing any backup he might potentially need.

He didn't need backup, but he did need to get out of here and why was abundantly clear in seconds.

The prisoners—actually, the prisoner, because the other two bodies occupying the space had ceased to live none too long ago, hadn't even moved when they came. He had short-cropped hair and what must have been a baby face once upon a time. It was as gaunt and lacking in naïveté as any ghoul in a Halloween horror.

_He's one of ours_, she knew and believed. The muscle was all that remained just before starvation had begun to set in. In his ripped, ruined fatigues, he was a body of shoulders and calves and callused, broken fingers. He tapped them against his thigh in time to his off-key crooning of "Into the Wild Blue Yonder," the official anthem of the USAF. If the grinding bones hurt at all, he didn't seem to care.

"_Off we go into the wild blue yonder,  
Climbing high into the sun;  
Here they come zooming to meet our thunder,  
At 'em boys, Give 'er the gun!_"

The enthusiasm that made that song great was gone in this man, having been stolen by all he'd seen along with his voice. Nearly hoarse or not, he kept on keeping on; freedom in reach or not, he continued to sing. She didn't think they were even real to him anymore, merely of figment of hope gone to pot.

"Airman," she pitched low, but loud enough for the young man to hear, "we're here to bring you home."

Slowly, he rotated his head in her direction to look at her and her sudden gasp turned into a gag on the stagnant air. He couldn't see her, had no way of knowing who they were. His eyes were a mess of scabbing abrasions, burns, and bruises. He couldn't see her and he'd learned not to care. She hadn't.

"We're gonna get you out of here," Ferretti told him, dropping into a crouch at his side. There wasn't much any of them could do about his eyes without Janet, but they could take some basic steps to make him comfortable. The soon to be-former prisoner flinched as soon as Lou's hand came near holding the swath of water-soaked gauze. Sam was moving to intervene when the colonel's touch stopped her short.

"We need to find the analyst." He nodded at Ferretti's running chatter as he made careful work of wounds that would probably never heal. "I think he's got 'im. We need the last one."

She didn't care for the idea of leaving Lou without support, but, given their uneven numbers, it was unavoidable. She trusted Ferretti to hold the fort while they went after the lone civilian of the group. In spite of his gamey lower limbs, the colonel remained a crack shot and that was what they'd need if escape became a numbers game. She needed to see some good come out of this. Two dead on arrival was the worst this could be allowed to get.

The colonel clicked his tongue twice and pointed between himself and Sam. They got a thumbs-up and, _"watch out," _from Lou, who returned to helping the wounded airmen take his first substantial drink of water in what might have been weeks. Yeah, Sam was proud of the man she considered closer than a brother, would always be.

Dropping into prowling stances, Sam and the colonel made their way back out into the stairwell. It remained dark, though Sam knew that dawn was on the horizon in short order. They needed to get in and out and back into the dessert before anyone else decided to pay them a visit. This kind of eerily good fortunate was bound to end, and at the worst possible time.

The made their way down to bottom of this flight to arrive at the door that was supposed to hold their last charge. As last time, O'Neill checked for traps and Sam jimmied the lock. They were in and out in two minutes with a bloodied, but outwardly cool security analyst settled protectively between them.

Sam found that there was a lesson to be learned from this mission and it was one she hoped to take back to her trainees someday: Don't ever assume that all traps are intended to kill. Not instantly.

Fifteen steps up, Sam found out how true that was. Several men, whom Sam could only conclude were the equivalent of prison wardens and their enforcers here, were standing there with their guns and grim amusement and waiting. The security analyst's sweating fingers found her wrist and squeezed—way harder than she would have given him credit for. She knew it was panic and she sympathized, but did he _have_ to choose her shooting hand? Now, she couldn't have lifted it to open fire even if she wanted to.

Her CO was having a different sort of problem. If Sam wasn't out of her mind, she'd say he'd frozen. His finger was poised in front of the trigger tight enough for a hiccup to be a mistake and he hadn't taken a single shot. Behind the goggles, she couldn't see him blink, but she knew him well enough by now to know he was reliving his own worst nightmare in living color for the second time. Nevertheless, trapped between nowhere to run and too many to run from, he still managed to do her proud.

He stared at the men in khaki brown uniforms and fatigues balefully. "I was wondering when you were going to get here." She could almost see his eyebrows waggling, tauntingly. "Remember me?" he asked, with open arms.

One man smiled and raised his gun. Sam expected him to put an end to the colonel's unrelenting commentary. He put an end to the security analyst instead. The generally composed, stoic man landed in a pile of bones, loose as a de-stringed marionette. His back slapped wetly against the dirt steps, his exit wound a blooming rose of flesh and muscle in Sam's mind. Her nose wrinkled at the acrid smell of gunpowder in the closed space of the corridor instead of at the scent of scorched flesh. She'd gotten used to the smells, but she found them unpleasant, to say the least.

Her commander rolled his eyes in a play at exasperation. (She read the tautness in his shoulders; she knew better.) "What'd you have to go and do that for? We weren't done with him yet."

"We were done with him," the shooter replied, still smiling a deeply unsettling smile. His English was more than passable despite the accent. Sam was not reassured by their common tongue. That might have been related to his shooting one of the people they'd come to rescue in the chest, but she'd need to test that theory in a controlled laboratory setting before saying for sure. Thusly, she could only reiterate to herself, _Best mission ever._

This was going just as badly as she'd expected. _At least I get to be right._ Forget cold comfort, that was no comfort. Sam had been captured while American and captured while female before. She wasn't sure she could stand to live through that again, not with the same man watching and still-unsettled fears burbling.

Sam wasn't afraid of dying, but the idea of living, and living _here_, terrified her.

And Jack O'Neill was living proof of the reason why.

~!~

Sam was this close to humming the Academy fight song to put an end to all the silence. She traced her initials in the dirt on the floor instead, to keep from disturbing the colonel who already appeared to so uneasy.

He'd frozen. There'd been so many and they'd been so woefully outgunned that surrender was all they could do if instant death wasn't on the agenda. She'd seen him fighting the urge to puke at the prospect, but holding back. If he had been alone, she was positive he would have taken them on. If the entire team had been at his side, there'd have been no question. But he'd had her for backup and a dead hostage at his feet and an abomination of memories on his back. So, he'd buckled and, now, he couldn't forgive himself. She had doubts whether the Air Force would either.

"_'I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.'_" He spoke it in time to the recitation in her head. He took the Code of Conduct to heart, as she did. If this was Paraguay, and he had it all to do again, he never would have let this happen. When Jack O'Neill was tip-top, his detractors knew better than to stand in his way. They either knew or they learned. The man in this room was not that Jack O'Neill.

This man had been dropped, broken, into a hell like this before and he'd never managed to leave. Not for his baby boy or his wife, not for his best friend or the former friend who was so sorry for his part in it all that he'd begged forgiveness once, twice, and many times more. Cromwell had never gotten that forgiveness because he'd never known the right Jack O'Neill to ask, if there could be a right one.

Sam didn't even know where she'd start, because someday she'd have to. She supposed that forgiveness had to start within, but she certainly wasn't there yet. The sin wasn't even finished yet.

_Forgiveness?_ She could have scoffed or thrown something if there was anything but a semi-empty shit bucket to throw.

_Forgiveness?_ She shook her head. Maybe she'd try again tomorrow. If they saw tomorrow. Because it wasn't certain, every moment mattered, even those when she was guilty and he was half-back in time. Every moment was a chance for redemption, not something every person got—or deserved.

"Sir," she addressed to the man who was standing, albeit barely, at the locked door in front of them. He grunted in response. She went on anyway, just because. "Sir, have you ever gotten an order you didn't want to follow? I mean, really didn't want to follow?"

He shifted to lean his shoulder against the door and gave her his eyes. Even glazed, the implicit, _Ya think,_ came right across in that look. She ducked her head, knowing she was turning red and hating it.

"I mean in addition to the stuff we normally do, sir. Do you ever get, I don't know, side orders from up top, orders you can't tell anyone about?" It was a question and, as far as Sam was concerned, they did not count as a confidentiality breech. No details, no jail time, or so she hoped. _Assuming I live long enough to get back on American soil, Leavenworth will be a beach vacation compared to this._

The colonel coughed and rubbed at his arms. They both missed their jackets something awful at this point. For a place so tightly enclosed, it got damned cold. Sam wasn't sure it wasn't being done intentionally. _Another kind of torture_, she added to the list of ways they'd already hurt them_._ If the colonel wasn't already otherwise occupied, they might have tried sharing body heat. As it was, she questioned the wisdom of being that close, even if he'd let her.

"Kind of goes with the job, Captain." It was 'Captain' and not 'Carter,' because they'd effectively ceased to exist once they were caught behind enemy lines. Name, rank, and serial number were all well and good until your country disavowed knowledge of your actions and allegiance. Then, it was basically just rubbing salt in your own wound.

"Yes, sir, but I was wondering if you'd ever had any especially bad missions like that. How do you deal with it, sir, when the very people who could help are the ones you aren't allowed to tell?"

He dropped his eyes to the ground for so long she thought he'd fallen asleep. She'd just about risen to catch him before he fell when he twisted himself to look at her and said, "You have to decide what you can live with. Think it over long and hard before you act; then, you decide. Think it over long and hard, because you can never take it back."

On that one, he was preaching to the choir.

"That's good advice, sir. I'll take it under advisement."

At her reply, he smiled; a small, anemic thing on a mouth so known for mischief, but, for five seconds, it was the most beautiful sight in Baghdad. And she should know.

~!~

She estimated they'd been there about five hours when she finally lost him. Surprisingly, it was Sam's attempts at comfort that sent him over. She'd been singing—badly, she knew—the Air Force's second, unofficial, anthem, "(U.S.) Air Force Blue." She liked the old school feel of the song. It reminded her of the trainees at her father's old posts, the way they'd sing as they jogged in their ranks, 2-by-2.

_"They took the blue from the skies and a pretty girl's eyes  
and a touch of Old Glory's hue,  
And gave it to the men who proudly wear the U.S. Air Force blue._

_The U.S. Air Force Blue!"_

She still remembered those few dates she'd had with some of the younger enlisted men when she was in high school and how they would say, without fail, that that song made them think of her. She used to tease them endlessly for the sentiment, but she'd been secretly pleased. Her father had said the same thing about her mother. She couldn't help but wonder if the colonel had ever said it to Sara.

When she looked at him to ask, he was staring at her as though seeing her for the first time. Though she'd never given it much thought, she realized now that the colonel's attention could be damned unnerving. Its constant presence, save for after Paraguay, had turned it into something she was merely accustomed to and bore no further consideration, so she didn't consider it. She did now.

Unsure how to broach the subject, Sam decided to go about it another way. "Do you know the Air Force songs, sir? My dad had me and my brother, Mark, singing them in diapers. By the time I made it to the Academy, I could sing both in three languages. It was old hat to me."

He didn't say word, didn't stop leaning against the door, just leaned and looked. He hardly blinked.

"My dad tells me that he used to sing AFB to my mom, especially when she was carrying me. Said he wanted a blue-eyed daughter just like her, so he could sing the song to her, too." Uncomfortable with his constant scrutiny, she looked down at her combat boots and began flicking clumps of dirt out of her laces. "I think he'd still sing it to me if I let him." She wrapped her arms around her knees and risked a glance up him. He wasn't just looking at her; he'd begun to gaze through her as if she wasn't there.

She cleared her throat. "Did you ever sing it to Sara, sir?"

He blinked at the sound of his wife's name and turned away. He braced himself against the door and ceased to acknowledge her. Sam was completely confused and at a loss for how to respond. Frowning and looking futilely for someone who would know, she rose to her feet. Keeping her hands spread out in front of her, she came closer. She didn't know everything there was to know about Jack O'Neill's past, but she knew that it rivaled Jonas' for trauma. She wasn't planning to make the mistakes she'd made with him.

"Sir?"

He had rested his head on his folded arms against the door. She could see hear his agitated breath from her place behind him. She didn't let their respective positions make her complacent. He knew exactly where she in relation to the kind of damage she could do from this distance. He may never have confessed an affinity for physics, but he was an acknowledged expert in how to use them to take people down, by hand or by bullet.

But, he still wouldn't look at her.

"Sir, have I done something wrong?"

He lowered his arms and shifted so that she only saw his back again, anything but face to face. It was too reminiscent of the days immediately preceding their confrontation for her to be okay with. She grabbed his shoulder to turn him back towards her. _I'm taking my life in my hands, but all right._ Contrary to the tension in his stance, he didn't resist her urging.

Once they were eye to eye, he couldn't seem to stop looking at her. He laid one of his hands on her shoulder and let the other one drift back into her hair. They'd never had any aversion to physical contact, but it had never gone this far.

She was realizing quickly that he wasn't okay now, not at all. "Sir."

"I missed you."

She tilted her head with a frown. "I'm right here, sir."

"You weren't here last time and I missed you, but you're here now."

Sam blinked, only taking a small step back when what he was saying began to sink in. The hint of contentment in his face almost made her wish her best friend really was here. "Sir…"

"I know you're not really here, but it's still…nice to see you." His fingers went back to twining gently in her hair. "Not so scary."

Knowing there was nowhere she could go, she decided to do all she could while she was with him. "Then, I'm glad to be here. It's always nice to see you, sir." She wanted to help, not feed into his delusion. He didn't deserve to wake up to that tomorrow.

He released a familiar, tinny self-conscious laugh and let go of her hair. "Thanks, Carter."

She couldn't deny letting out a sigh of relief. The Jack O'Neill she knew was still in there. _Probably reciting hockey scores until we get home._ They'd have to have a talk about his coping mechanisms someday. _Pot. Kettle._ She told her inner voice to shut it.

Feeling just a little bit reckless, she reached up and ruffled his unruly cowlicks.

He slapped at her hand, grouching, "Aw, maaaa."

She grinned triumphantly, licking her thumb and rubbing one spot clean on his filthy face, knowing her own was no better.

He had a half a day of stubble and his eyes showed that he'd fallen farther than she ever could have imagined. Not even when he couldn't really look at her had he been this far gone. He gifted her with a bleak smile and she returned it with one brighter. She wanted to be the one thing that didn't go wrong on this mission, the one thing he didn't have to worry about despite the fact that she was the fox in his hen house and he was blissfully unaware.

"It's okay," she said simply, lying for her next breath. "Just rest. I'll have your back."

That he wanted to was easy to see. He was wavering just so on his shaky legs, his weight shifted onto the one ankle of the two that was twisted instead of sprained. If ironclad willpower manufactured a thread, it would have composed the fabric holding him together. God knew it was all that was keeping her from falling apart.

"You'll have my back," he asked, voice rough with early dehydration and a touch of forgotten insecurity.

Her grin narrowed, face tightening in external response to her guilt. She was refusing to think about it anymore, nothing to do or see here. "Always."

He stroked her face with grubby hands and she didn't mind. The act kept him on his feet, leaning or not, and that's where she wanted him. If he fell again now, he might never stand again. Coming back here had been coming back to Hell, the last thing she thought he deserved. _To hell with the Brass, I can't do this._

"I knew you were the right one," he said, echoing his week-old declaration that he'd known she was a perfect fit from the minute he opened her file. She'd thought he was talking out of his ass at the time, filling the silence so that she couldn't add more recriminations to the list he wouldn't live down. She should have taken heart in his sincerity; it was no less genuine in the cold that cradled them tonight.

"Funny you should say that, sir. That's how I felt the moment I met you."

His smile flagged and faded, his fingers slipped from her cheeks and down her shoulders to her arms. She found his hands when he dropped his heavy head onto her shoulder. "I'm tired, Sam."

It was bad, but that was something she already knew.

"I know, Colonel…_Jack_," she soothed. "But I've got you covered. You can sleep for awhile."

"Can't sleep," he muttered, lips clumsy with exhaustion that probably branched years farther back than hers. He turned his face into her neck and she felt him breathe her in. He held on tighter and closer, and maybe a little more desperately, but she didn't care. This was what they did for each other, taking his burden was nothing new.

"Then, rest a little. You'll feel better if you close your eyes."

He muttered something like, "Yogi psychobabble mumbo-jumbo." She let him and rubbed his back in soothing circles until his harried breathing eased. _Definitely not asleep, though not at his most alert either._ It was better than the nothing he would have gotten otherwise. It was good enough, like her.

The reprieve didn't last long, maybe half an hour, and she'd kept standing even after her shoulder had grown stiff and her legs ached, because he needed her to keep him going. She'd forgiven him for many things; a couple of muscle aches were nothing. She hoped to god it helped despite knowing better.

When she let go, she thought he might have been worse off than he had been—but she still let go. _Never forget the training, never take it for granted._

He wandered away unsteadily; head down and thinking out loud. He thought he'd never get out again, so he could hardly bear to try. She could hardly bear not to, but she would never leave him here. She wasn't Cromwell and the colonel meant too much to her—and to the team—for none of them to ever return for him, orders be damned. _Sometimes, the Rules of Engagement have to be subverted._ Reality, regulations, and the right thing seemed to live at loggerheads in her world.

The colonel slammed an agitated fist into the door. It didn't give.

_And his._

~!~

Over the last year, Sam had vaguely wondered how much those enemies the colonel had referred to hated him. She'd also wondered why. He seemed as good as good came in their line of work, straight-up to a fault, and someone anyone worth a damn could rely on. Yet, people, apparently powerful people, hated him. She just didn't understand.

Not having had that understanding when it counted, Sam figured she'd very much fallen prey to that influential enmity and brought the team with her. _He would have come even if he'd known_, she tried to console herself, a gargantuan task while on the wrong side of the world, on the wrong side of the law, and trapped in a dusty cell with her CO as he slowly went out of his mind.

He paced and paced, or staggered and staggered more accurately. She got dizzy just watching, unable to listen for further sounds of their friends anywhere else in the complex. She was unaccountably relieved not to hear screaming yet. She didn't think she was quite up to that score; in her estimation, Colonel O'Neill certainly wasn't. That he hadn't gone catatonic already, Sam took as a point for her in this insane game. She'd kept him talking, his mouth moving, sometimes even in a language they spoke at home.

Sam had taken French and Russian in school, which had come in handy on ops, but not nearly as often as the treasure troves of useable linguistic knowledge that were Kawalsky and her commanding officer. (Neither would actually admit to it if asked, but in pinch…) Now, his entire arsenal of curses and insults, intermixed with the odd jot of philosophy, was on display, regardless of whether she knew the recipient or if he knew the date. The idea that he didn't made her sick to her stomach, it was so apparent.

He was lost, they were lost, and the hostages had been irretrievably lost. She knew he'd never let this one go and she couldn't say who she was to tell him he should.

_And Lou_. The thought caught in her mind and in her chest. She couldn't think about him when she didn't know, didn't know and wasn't sure and…She couldn't think about him.

"It'll be good to see Charlie again," she said in the hopes of bringing him closer to present and putting some distance between herself and the potential losses the future might bring.

He shuffled to a halt, fingers dragging against the grimy wall after the momentum had left him. "What?"

"Charlie, it'll be good to see him. He's always so happy, he can make any nightmare seem worth it." She hugged her knees tighter to her chest as he turned to stare down at her. In all his emotional commotion, she'd forgotten not to underestimate him in this state. He still had a decade or more of training on her and maybe a hundred pounds, not taking into account pure might. _And motive, can't forget about motive._

If there'd been anywhere to go, she would have backed up at the look in his eye: predatory and wary. The look of someone who'd never met Sam and had no reason to trust her, and certainly not with the closely-guarded knowledge of his son.

"Oh, boy," she whispered in an undertone and tried to ease back anyway. The corner she encountered was not her friend. Grimacing, she concluded that she _had_ to think these situations through more carefully before acting. _Charlie is his Berserk Button. I _knew_ that. What the hell is wrong with me?_ The answer couldn't be nearly as bad as what would be wrong with her when her gradually stalking colonel got through with her.

"Sir," she appealed, "you know me. It's me, Sam, y'know, Carter."

He stood over her and she had never been more afraid in her life, a lofty statement given her life. She wanted to get up, to try and face him one-on-one even if it meant dying on her feet rather than on her ass. He couldn't exactly deny her that, could he?

He bent over and, right when she expected his hands to snap her neck, he caught her arms and yanked her to her feet. _Oh, joy. _

She hit the wall hard, back first, seconds later and he loomed closer once again. The man he'd been after Paraguay she was wary of, but she'd never feared him, only the affect he had on her. This man, with no loyalty to her or awareness of her, left her scared out of her wits. _And he's the one I'm trying to protect._ If she'd ever felt this out of her depth, she didn't remember it.

She had trained for this eventuality; she could take on a physically superior opponent and possibly win. But if there was nowhere to run, there was no chance at any meaningful victory. It was delaying the inevitable.

_Wait a minute,_ she stopped short in sudden self-awareness. _I've done this. I've handled dirtbags three times the colonel's size without warning. I can do this._ Her conscience was finally showing its true colors. On the other hand, that might have been her ego.

"Sir?" She smiled in apology for what she was about to do.

He squinted down at her, his deadly hands poised for whatever, probably deadly, purpose near her neck. "Huh?"

_Not his finest moment_, she lamented when she grabbed his shoulders and kneed him in the groin. As he slipped, pained and confused, to the floor, her knee came up another time to meet his jaw with the mathematically precise—she'd calculated—amount of force necessary to knock him out cold. She wouldn't have caught him out at home or survived here had he meant it. She had to conclude that some part of him still recognized her and that _that_ had kept her alive.

_Jonas would be impressed_, she decided though she didn't think about that particular fling much nowadays. She reflected on that blip in time while repositioning the colonel on the floor. He hadn't impacted his head on anything harder than her thigh. His breathing was labored, likely more from anxiety than injury, but regular. She went to pat his shoulder, then, reconsidered. He gave every indication of being at about only a third his usual lethality, which still surpassed the Average Joe by miles. Smiling fondly to herself, she mused, _No need to tickle a sleeping dragon._

Were she grateful to Jonas for nothing else, she would be grateful for how he'd managed to help her save her relationship with Colonel O'Neill. He'd been good for her and taught her a handful of things about herself she'd needed to know. Chief among them was the fact that her CO, however typically exceptional, didn't get to punish her for things she hadn't done wrong. He didn't get to use her as his psychological punching bag, not and keep her as a member of his team. He had to pay for the things he couldn't live with, not make her pay, regardless of whether he realized he was doing it. Jonas had reminded her to stand up for herself when she'd forgotten how.

After all, were it not for the lessons he'd taught her, she never would have known when it was time to leave _him_, when it was time to come home. Some students could be taught, but others simply had to learn for themselves. The colonel had proved to be a good learner when Jonas had refused to try. And yet, he'd managed to impart to her the best advice he never took:

_"Know a good thing when you've got it and never let it get away."_

She brushed the backs of her fingers against the spiky hair on O'Neill's unconscious head, exhaling, relieved, when he sighed but didn't stir. She knew what she had and she wasn't giving it up for all the oak leaves the Brass had to offer. Not even for the bars that hung in the balance. She could do a lot worse than being stuck with Lou, Charlie, and the colonel for the rest of her career.

Far as Sam was concerned, this report was already written.


	7. Part VI

While Jack O'Neill, er, slept, Sam plotted. She wanted out of here and she wanted her CO out of here. She wanted her team out of this building and their people back home. This mission was the epitome of FUBAR and, though she wasn't looking forward to the inevitable after-action inquiries, Sam had made her peace with all that had gone wrong and her part in it. That said, in her estimation, it was past time for them to make to make a very fashionable exit from this hell hole.

She didn't know what the wardens planned to do with them in the long term, but she didn't intend to be their guest long enough to find out. All they needed was a chance.

When her life was on the life, Sam could be pretty formidable and pretty damned dangerous with her bare hands, in Kawalsky's estimation anyway. Secretly, Sam thought he was buttering her up so she'd put in a good word for him with Janet. Sam may have been preoccupied with her internal drama, but she wasn't that oblivious.

_Somebody's got a crush, _she thought with a wicked grin. If those two got it together, Sam wanted to be there. If they didn't get it together, she wanted to be there to _make_ them get it together. She was all in favor of fanning that flicker into a flame.

But she couldn't do that from here, she needed to be there.

Hazarding a pat to the colonel's shoulder, Sam rose to her feet and made her way to the door. They'd lost their gear and their weapons, but they hadn't lost their wits. Sam just had to wait the bastards out. They'd have to come eventually, either to feed them or to pump them for information. It was an inevitability, much like the headache her CO would be waking up with.

_Come on, boys, make my day._

And-wouldn't you know it-they did.

She didn't know whether they'd been under surveillance throughout the night or if they'd merely had low expectations of two American soldiers on their own, but they only sent two people for them when it came time to feed them. One carried the food and the other a gun. If Sam had been a betting woman, she'd have laid odds that the P-90 the minion was carrying had belonged to one of the late Special Ops officers Sam had seen hours ago. She wasn't sure she was supposed to recognize the weapon, but she certainly did. Months between Nellis and Peterson had left her intimately familiar with every bit of the high-tech artillery that passed through Ops hands. She built it, she broke it; someday, she'd teach it. If looks could kill, this op would have been a cake walk.

Food minion placed the food in the doorway while the other trained the barrel of his weapon over her heart. Her eyes never strayed from the man with the tray. There was a lot be said for her training. _Not much for theirs though._

The tray was made out of some kind of reflective metal. She could work with that.

Well-aware of the two men watching her for any sign of duplicity, Sam slowly approached the tray sitting idle before her. They couldn't close the door without her picking up the tray. To pick up the tray, she had to basically lean out of the room. The tray was metal. Sam calculated that her chances were better than 58% for making them sorry they'd ever been born.

Once gun minion made the decision to kick the bottom of the tray and, consequently, spill gruel and tepid water all over Sam and her nice cozy BDUs, all bets were off.

She flipped the tray, slammed it against the doorjamb, and brought it around in a single smooth arc to bash food minion in the face. Thrown by the counter-intuitive tactic, gun minion took a step back. Took a step back, forgetting that this prison remained impregnable by virtue of their intricate system of stairs. Sam leapt back into cell as he fell backward into the dark, setting off the P-90's hair trigger and peppering the corridor with mighty holes.

_A lot of stairs and a lot of bullets_, Sam reasoned, peaking out into the corridor to see if she could expect to see their finely armed friend again. She didn't think so. Food minion, however, had the nerve to start waking up from his sudden bought of unconsciousness, which didn't exactly conform to Sam's 'perfect plan for getting the hell out of here.' Reintroducing him to his very solid serving tray, Sam put paid to that particular obstacle.

Knowing they were officially running on borrowed time, Sam decided it was time to make that fashionable exit she'd been so gung ho about earlier.

Going with the most reliable military movie cliché she knew, Sam stood straight up and shouted as loudly as she dared, "Up and at 'em, Airman O'Neill." He jerked to semi-consciousness. "I repeat, up and at 'em. Do you think you're at the Waldorf, O'Neill?"

He murmured confusedly, "Ma'am, no, ma'am." He rubbed his jaw unhappily and rolled onto his knees. He was just stumbling onto his shaky legs when he gave their surroundings a cursory glance and frowned. "The hell?"

Sam stood at attention, waiting to see which of the two O'Neills she'd be dealing with. Realizing he wasn't saying anything else, she moved to stand before him. His frown didn't disappear but he didn't try to keep his distance either. He scrubbed at his eyes and blinked.

"Carter, why does my face hurt?" Joy and guilt blended together until it seemed perfectly logical to lean up and kiss her commanding officer on the cheek. His eyebrows flicked high even as his mouth tilted in its customary half-smile. "Don't tell me, let me just enjoy the aftermath."

She punched him in the shoulder, maybe a little too elated. "Let's get out of here. I think I left my iron on."

He shrugged and she was pleased to see him managing to limp a little more easily behind her. Her trusty serving tray in hand, Sam nodded for the colonel to keep behind her and, at last, they made their particularly stylish exit.

The colonel was never going to let her hear the end of the 'Great Iraqi Tray Mutiny of '95,' though she supposed there were worst things to be remembered for.

~!~

Sam snagged the handgun food minion had stashed under his coat and gave Colonel O'Neill her trusty serving tray-slash-battering ram following a brief demonstration of knocking the hell out of the enemy with said shiny object. He was suitably impressed, muttering something about her teaching a class on conflict resolution with cooking utensils. She wasn't opposed to the idea.

Following her mental recollections of their initial trip to their cell, Sam led the way back to the main corridor. They managed to duck out of sight of the only two guards they hadn't had a chance to dispatch, but were surprised at not seeing more. They unspoken question-and prayer-was answered when an overeager fist nearly broke her nose on the trek up the staircase. She reared back in time to avoid a Class II nasal fracture, only to nearly break her neck plummeting down the incline instead.

Two pairs of arms saved her from the fall and pulled her into an anonymous cell just in time to avoid a contingent of prison guards. Once the solemn men had passed, she yanked out of their hold to point her gun at their unexpected visitor. Maybe it was the smell of blood or the lingering, overwhelming stink that inundated the place, but until she'd seen him with her own two eyes, she hadn't recognized him at all.

"Feisty as ever, I see," Lou joked before lifting her up in a bear hug that would have left Paddington Bear feeling inept. She didn't care about the damp blood on his jacket or the faint smell of vomit clinging to his person. She'd seen him in worse condition, as he'd seen her. It was just good to see him in the first place.

As soon as he set her back on the floor, she sucker punched him in the arm. "I was worried about you."

Lou and the colonel shared a look, as if they were jointly conceiving annoying ways to tell her how cute she was. Consequently, they completely deserved it when she used both hands to pinch them-hard-at the same time. As you do.

They hissed and slid as far out of reach as their penal shoebox allowed. She stalked after the colonel, who'd drawn the short straw on being closer to her and being too sore to do a whole lot of extra fleeing. Upon finding himself the sole subject of her wrath, he pled to her nurturing side with a hinting glance at his legs. She'd make him pay for that later. She was embarrassed to say his ploy had worked.

Eager to move on from how easily she tended to let things go where her CO was concerned, Sam decided it was time to move out. They were almost out of the main building. If they could just leave the grounds and hot-foot it to Baghdad proper, they could arrange for a rendezvous with Bravo and call it an adventure. Anything that involved less jumping, ass-kicking, and running was right up Sam's alley. She was in more of a mood for drinking, showering, and sleeping right about now. _Heavy on the drinking._ And also pool, there needed to be some pool playing to round out her foray into luxury. She only sort of meant that ironically. She had no idea how this had become her life.

Colonel O'Neill took the time to update Ferretti on their progress, sparing no detail on Sam's indisputable skill with cookware in combat. Of course, he embellished to hell and back, but he sounded so much like the version of the colonel who haunted Peterson's shooting range that she couldn't see correcting him. Lou's meaningful nod toward him when his back was turned said much the same.

"If the two of you are through bonding over my return from crazytown, can we go?" The colonel was leaning gingerly against the door, waiting for the okay to lead them out. Sam was the lowest ranked, but, for the moment, she was calling the plays. It was still taking some getting used to.

"That depends. We all clear?"

The colonel double-checked the corridor and gave her the hand signal for affirmative. They were back to where they thrived. Not another word was said, neither when they surprised a pair sentries taking a cigarette break outside the back exit nor when they ran across the body of the airman from the night before baking in the sun. There wasn't anything to say, so they said nothing at all, letting the symphonic clinking of the four sets of dog tags around Lou's neck write the story those soldiers never would. All Alpha could hope to do was come close.

_Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. _Coming close wasn't much better and she thought about it while the ball chains sung.

By the time Bravo Team was rolling up to complete Alpha's mission, Alpha's three-sixths were ready to head out and head home. Sam and Lou were supporting the heavily limping colonel on either side and the sunset in the distance was a godsend to three who hadn't seen it in a while. _The only sight I don't think I'll ever tire of._

O'Neill wasn't quite normal, but he was on the way, would be closer once he wasn't in so much pain. The stairs hadn't been kind. He groused when they stumbled and held on more tightly to them than either Sam or Lou was willing to put into words. Sam couldn't speak for Ferretti, but she was holding on tight, too. She'd nearly lost her colonel in more ways than one and for what? They were walking away with casualties and they didn't have a single life saved to show for it. They were walking away with the skin on their backs and only some of the clothes. _For what?_

That wasn't an answer Sam had, because, for all she'd just survived, she hadn't learn anything new. Jack O'Neill was no turncoat and he couldn't be bought. Her superiors had asked her to make him suffer, apparently just because they could and she didn't know how to feel anything but betrayed. It was a feeling she was sick of.

Moving in with weapons aimed to stave off any 'heroic' militants, Bravo Team immediately closed ranks around Alpha and began staging a tactical retreat. Sam could have kissed Maybourne when he offered her his canteen. She settled on a grateful smile and was humbled by the self-conscious one he returned. He might have had a slimy personality, but there might have been a worthwhile human being in him somewhere.

After taking a couple of sips, she went to share it with the colonel and found him being given a thorough once-over by none other than their favorite pocket-sized medical officer. Janet had to march double-time with one hand constantly on her weapon to keep up with the group movements, but that didn't preclude her from interrogating each member of the recently captured insertion team on their medical status. Sam realized that she was up next.

Colonel O'Neill was growling at Kawalsky, who'd slipped in while she was distracted to take over supporting their CO. Charlie just grinned and kept up his idle banter to the colonel's disgust. "You're getting too old for this crap, Jack. _Cannot_ keep bailing your ancient ass out of trouble."

"Cut the crap, Kawalsky. You're damn near as old as I am. I just have the rank to go with my wealth of experience," he snarked haughtily. "And I bail _your_ ass out all the time! And I'm better-looking!"

Sam ducked her head to hide her smirk. _Yeah, he's getting better all right._

"If you say so, Colonel," he placated, chuckling and doing a bad job of hiding it. "I hate to argue with a sick man."

"As soon as Doc fixes me up, I'm _so _kicking your ass for that." Said doctor, trotting alongside Sam, sent a dubious look in the colonel's direction. He wouldn't be kicking anybody's ass for a while. Be the cause physical or psychological, Colonel O'Neill was unquestionably, if temporarily, out of commission.

Kawalsky glanced at Sam. Had they been home, she would have hugged him to death by now, still planned to. "You hearing this? I want you to back me up in a couple of weeks when I tell him he said this and he swears it was the drugs. You got my back on this?"

Sam held up her right and solemnly declared, "I cannot tell a lie."

"Don't trust her," Lou objected, "she's lying!"

Sam stuck her tongue out in his direction, then, went back to Janet's evaluation. She could mock Ferretti later, there was time now. There was always time.

Janet didn't get to save anybody's life in Baghdad. She came all that way, carrying all those medical supplies and she didn't get to do anything more invasive than set a sprained ankle. And maybe that was the best possible end for her. Sam wasn't sure the doctor could have taken it if it had come down to what the colonel had expected. Janet was there doing what she would have done anyway, making sure they didn't have to eliminate anyone who might have survived.

Where Sam's orders had bordered on personal, the colonel's had been purely pragmatic. Rather than risk the lives of two entire teams transporting hostages that might not live to tell the tale, he'd been given carte blanche to eliminate the supposed security risks with extreme prejudice. When the Brass wanted 'in and out, with no detours,' they didn't mess around. It was only at Charlie's advice and the colonel's request that Janet had been authorized to come along at all. They would have had to make those decisions without an ounce of expertise in the worst possible conditions. That wasn't a scenario either member of the command team had been able to stomach, so here they were.

_Not a single life saved but our own. Guess that makes an honest day's work._

Thinking about everything that had happened already and all that was surely to come, Sam let out a sigh.

'Honest' really wasn't the word for it.

~!~

Sam wore her service uniform to the general's office the midnight after they'd returned. She hadn't seen the colonel since the team debriefing or anyone. She'd retreated to her quarters to write her report, just not the one they'd thought. This wasn't something she could have looked them in the eye and lied about. If the colonel recalled the slightest hint of their conversation from Baghdad Penitentiary, he could have looked at her and known. She hadn't looked at him, herself, the whole flight home.

She saluted the brigadier general waiting in McClear's office to see her once again and found herself wondering where the general went during these times. It was his office, after all.

He returned her salute sharply and motioned her toward one of the visitors' chairs. "Have a seat, Captain." He folded his hands together as he had the time before and looked squarely at her forehead. _Nice to know some things never change. _"I'm sure you could use some rest after the...mission in Iraq, so we'll keep this meeting brief."

Sam agreed, "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

"You have your report," he asked, gesturing toward the folder Sam had carried in with her.

She handed it to him easily. She stood by every word. "Yes, sir."

He flipped through the detailed document with something like approval on his face. That is, until he reached her conclusions. His frown returned in force and she couldn't deny the accusation he was only managing not to make with visible effort.

"Can you explain the contents of this report, Captain?"

"Yes, sir." She laced her finger together on her lap and began the short speech she'd practiced for the better part of the night. "It is my judgment that Colonel Jack O'Neill took the best possible courses of action on the operation in question. He acted with the full faith of his team to carry out the mission objective and recover the prisoners we were assigned to recover. That we were unable to complete the mission as assigned is not a reflection on Colonel O'Neill's leadership, fitness, or capabilities, but on the circumstances themselves."

"Are you certain those are your findings, Captain," asked the very general who'd started this, the one whose name she still didn't know.

"I've done everything I could think of to test Colonel O'Neill, sir. He's passed every test with flying colors. I don't know what other steps I could be expected to take." That much was true. Then again, Sam hadn't exactly put her CO through his paces as she'd been instructed to do. Sure, a couple of mild behavioral set-ups that a cadet could have sidestepped had been employed, but that was all.

Had he been less preoccupied with his old Iraqi demons, she didn't doubt he would have called her on her duplicity. Cromwell's Captain Sheppard hadn't wasted a single opportunity to do so; in fact, he'd made that _his_ solo mission on the hop from Al Taqaddum. Sam wished she'd had it that easy.

As it was, Sam was worried that Sheppard knew too much and that the trust she'd worked so hard to gain was about to disappear. _"But that's the price you pay to do the job,"_ she remembered saying and it had never been more true. If standing by the colonel meant losing the colonel and all the others, so be it.

The general appeared unimpressed. Sam doubted he'd be the only one to feel that way. Without quite thumbing her nose at the agreement, she hadn't exactly stayed true to the spirit of it. They'd asked her to test her colonel when he was already suffering, when there was no possible way he could win. Hurting him, hurting her team wasn't something she could do and that reality was something she could tell she was going to have to pay for, maybe even with her career.

_"Because, now that you're one of mine, my problems are your problems. So are my enemies," _the colonel had said. And that suited Sam just fine.

In the immortal words of every person to ever have their back against the wall, "_Bring. It. On."_

She could hardly wait.

* * *

**End Notes: **Thus concludes the first year and then some of the life of Captain Samantha Carter and Special Operations Team One out of Peterson Air Force Base. There's more to come as the plot against Jack is continued in Story II and Sam's unintended role in his downfall ends a life and takes on a life of its own.

Story II is expected to add up to about 25,000 new words and will probably be posted as an addendum to this or rather than be listed under its own entry. The plan is to begin posting in October, but it may take longer as real life commitments crop up. As a small thank you to everyone who's read, here's a very brief sneak peek from Story II. Thank you again!

~!~

_"I still don't know how to deal with this stuff, sir."_

_ "That bad, huh?"_

_ She dug her boots in the mud rather than meet his wry glance. "Yeah, that bad."_

_ "Then, what I said before still goes."_

_ She flicked her eyes up at him. She hadn't expected him to remember any of Iraq this go-round, not even his own words._

_ Noting her surprise, he shrugged. "My brain might have been a little scrambled in there, but it was firing on at least a few cylinders. I remember some stuff, so sue me."_

_ "I might," she teased._

_ He pouted. "Party pooper."_

_ "There's a joke here, I know it."_

_ "Hey, that's my line."_

_ "No, you're just a bad influence."_

_ "Well, I _knew _that." They shared a quick smile that lingered till it was a longer one. They'd been having quite a few of those lately. Sam had to confess to enjoying the new camaraderie they shared._

_ Dipping his head and dropping her eyes, the colonel continued. "Anyway, you have to decide where your limits are. What can you live with and sleep at night? What's your bridge too far? When you know that you can sign any piece of paper they put in front of you without worry."_

_ "That true, sir?"_

_ He raised a shoulder in ignorance without shame. "Not in my experience, Captain, but it's a nice story to tell yourself."_

_ She didn't sigh, not this time. "Yes, sir."_


End file.
